An Afghan Hound in the grooming tent at the 147th Annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in Queens, NY on May 8, 2023. (Photo by Peter Fisher for The Washington Post)

“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)

Jimmy Bryan of Phoenix, Ariz., gets the checkered victory flag at the Indiana State Fairgrounds September 17, 1955 as he wins the “Hoosier Hundred” for the second consecutive year. Bryan averaged 83.98 miles an hour for the 100-lap, 100-mile AAA big car race. (Photo by AP Photo)

People dressed as zombies participate in a parade for World Zombie Day 2016 in London's West End, Britain on October 9, 2016. (Photo by Splash News and Pictures)

Ruins of a building are seen in the old village of Belchite, in northern Spain, November 13, 2016. Almost 80 years ago Tomas Ortin fled under the cover of night from his home in the small town of Belchite on Spain's northern plains to escape with hundreds of others from one of the bloodiest battles of the country's civil war. At 94 years old, Ortin now lives just across the road from Belchite, which has lain in ruins since Republican forces attacked it, a symbol of the destruction caused by the 1936-1939 war in which an estimated 500,000 people died. (Photo by Andrea Comas/Reuters)

A Soyuz MS-11 rocket carrying Russian, American and Canadian astronauts takes off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on December 3, 2018 before reached orbit later, the first manned mission since a failed launch in October. (Photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP Photo)

In a July 14, 1967 file photo, left, National Guardsmen make their way along Market Street in Newark, N.J, after an evening of deadly rioting and looting in what came to be known as the Newark riots. In a June 16, 2017 photo, right, an ambulance drives on the same block 50 years later. (Photo by AP Photo/File, left; Julio Cortez, right)

A boy tumbles as he plays soccer on the streets of the Khayelitsha township in Cape Town, December 3, 2009. (Photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)