A woman takes a selfie in front of a Lunar New Year display featuring sheep at a shopping mall in Hong Kong, February 13, 2015. (Photo by Bobby Yip/Reuters)

Australia’s Hannah Fredericks competes in the women’s 200m backstroke heats during the Australian Swimming Trials at the Brisbane Aquatic Centre on June 13, 2024. (Photo by David Gray/AFP Photo)

A fan enters the pitch to hug Lionel Messi of Inter Miami during a friendly game between Sporting San Miguelito and Inter Miami at Rommel Fernandez Stadium on February 02, 2025 in Panama, Ciudad de, Panama. (Photo by Manuel Velasquez/Getty Images)

A ballerina puts makeup on before practising for the revival of the classical ballet “Chopiniana”, the first since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, in the underground area of the National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre amid ongoing attacks, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on April 27, 2025. (Photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters)

A Maasai moran athlete has his face smeared with red ocher paint during preparations for the 2016 Maasai Olympics at the Sidai Oleng Wildlife Sanctuary, at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro, near the Kenya-Tanzania border in Kimana, Kajiado, Kenya December 10, 2016. (Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)

Italy's Giada Greggi, Elena Linari and teammates celebrate after qualifying for the Women's Euro 2025, in Bolzano, Italy on July 16, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Lorenzini/Reuters)

Liverpool soccer fans celebrate their team's victory against Tottenham Hotspur, clinching the Premier League title at Anfield in Liverpool, England, April 27, 2025. (Photo by Jon Super/AP Photo)

“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)