A colorful drawing is seen on a wall in Baghdad, Iraq on October 24, 2021. A group of volunteer painters tries to give hope and joy to the Iraqi residents by painting colorful murals on the walls of the houses and streets of the city, tired of violance. Seve-member group named “Butterfly Effect” is busy in drawing paintings to depict life in Baghdad and its cultural heritage on the buildings (Photo by Murtadha Al-Sudani/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Two orphaned wallaby joeys enjoy a play date to help them boost their social skills in Australia early July 2023. The rescued joeys are being hand-raised at Aussie Ark in News South Wales. (Photo by Aussie Ark/Cover Images)

Three Iranian women bathe in the sea on a shore of the Caspian sea in the city of Babolsar north of Tehran, on July 14, 2023 in Babolsar, Iran. The 7th National Festival of Sand Sculptures is being held in this town on the edge of the Caspian Sea. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

A member of the Lebanese Army riot-control forces fires a shotgun as they try to disperse a Hezbollah-organised rally to block the road to Beirut International Airport over a decision to bar two Iranian flights from landing there, in Beirut on February 15, 2025. An AFP correspondent said tear gas was fired to disperse crowds on February 15 after again blocking amidst calls by the Iran-backed group for a sit-in. (Photo by Ibrahim Amro/AFP Photo)

A woman already appears to be regretting her choice of heels for the day out during the Grand National Festival at Aintree Racecourse on April 8, 2017 in Liverpool, England. (Photo by Alamy Stock Photos)

Te Matatini Kapa Haka Aotearoa perform the Haka at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on the Royal Mile on August 14, 2014 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The largest performing arts festival in the world, this years festival hosts more than 3,000 shows in nearly 300 venues across the city. (Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)

“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)

A Tibetan woman with horses in a remote area of the Yushu Autonomous Prefecture of the Tibetan Plateau on May 31, 2016. (Photo by Giulia Marchi/The Washington Post)