When you think of the scariest critters that a hundred million years of Darwinian evolution in Australia spat into life, what comes to mind? Is it the particularly venomous critters? The snakes, spiders, or jellyfish? Maybe the crocodiles? Perhaps those goddamn coconut crabs that look like someone pulled a sick joke out of their nightmares?
All too often, when I read lists of “species I wouldn’t fuck with in Australia under any circumstances” this living dinosaur that can kill you with one kick does not get enough credit.
Today’s Moment of Science… the @#$% cassowary.
Ratites are a diverse collection of birds grouped together based on a handful of criteria. They include kiwis, ostriches, and the much closer related emus and cassowaries. Now-extinct ratites include moas and elephant birds, great beasts that could grow to be ten foot tall, half ton behemoths.
They’re generally flightless with their itsy excuses for wings, long spindly legs, and some of them are known to be capable of -scientific term- wrecking a motherfucker. The cassowary has been described as a living dinosaur, with powerful legs that can deliver a fatal blow with a flick of the three claws on their feet.
Well established to be the most dangerous bird on the planet, if you run into a cassowary? Keep fucking running. No matter how good you are with animals, no matter how well honed your ability is to ‘pspspspsps’ at your cat? They’re not gonna give you just the tip of that three-toed foot. They’re liable to kick you into the next life with those Australia-level sharp claws.
They’re not just dicks to humans; these prehistoric chickens barely put up with each other. In captivity, they generally get their own pen because they’ll fuck each other up. They’re also territorial out in the wild, claiming and defending several square kilometers for themselves, only socializing to make baby doucheface monsterfoot birds (my band name).
There are three species of cassowary, none of which are endangered on a worldwide scale. However, the natural rainforest habitat of the southern cassowary in Australia has experienced destruction, with numbers in Australia estimated to have dropped to a few thousand. The question of ‘why do we need the murderbirds’ may be weighing on you, which is fair. They play a huge role in germinating their habitat. They live mainly off fruit that’s fallen to the forest floor. As they travel through their territory, they re-deposit the seeds with, uh, a dose of cassowary fertilizer.
The circle of life in a heap of cassowary shit, folks.
Steve Irwin rarely if ever showed fear of any animal he encountered, even when it seemed like fear should have been employed as a natural defense mechanism. He worked to breed cassowaries in captivity as part of a preservation campaign. Sure enough, the hell foul attacked even him. He managed to get away safely, but noted that he would rather deal with a fucking crocodile.
If you’re gonna breed cassowaries, safety first. In 2019, a cassowary breeder in Florida was killed by his animal after he fell in her pen. No other explanation, just that the bird ‘clever girl’d him out of this life.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, hoping if nothing else, my column teaches you to be a bit smarter than Florida Man if ever dealing with a cassowary.
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