A dog takes a dip in the river Elbe on February 6, 2012 in Hamburg, Germany.The current cold front that has claimed over 200 lives in eastern Europe makes its way west. (Photo by Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)

A woman wearing a costume takes selfies while waiting for a photo shooting session in front of the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, China on January 5, 2024. (Photo by Tingshu Wang/Reuters)

In this October 16, 2014 photo, a man cleans his American classic car before going to work in Havana, Cuba. While the U.S. embargo that took effect in 1961 stopped the flow of new cars, and most parts, a few Cubans now manage to bring in replacement parts when friends or family visit from the U.S. (Photo by Franklin Reyes/AP Photo)

Dawn at Blyth beach huts in Northumberland, with the prospect of warm weather over the coming weekend on Friday, October 8, 2021. (Photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Images via Getty Images)

“Grit and Glamour”, a retrospective of the late British photographer Elsbeth Juda, who fled Nazi occupation and came to England in 1933, is at the Jewish Museum, in London, until July 1, 2018. Here: Shelagh Wilson, Copacabana beach, Rio de Janeiro, 1951. (Photo by Elsbeth Juda Archive/Victoria and Albert Museum)

A Highland Cow at sunset on the edge of the Marlborough Downs, Wiltshire, United Kingdom on October 18, 2020. (Photo by David White/PictureExclusive)

People wearing fancy costumes walk near a skating rink past signs requesting to use protective face masks and to keep a social distance amid the coronavirus disease (COVID 19) outbreak, as heavy fog covers a square named after Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin in Stavropol, Russia on December 1, 2020. (Photo by Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)