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Australian people have a reputation for being hardy and fearless — after all, when you live in a country that has every kind of poisonous snake and spider known to man, not to mention the elusive predator known as the drop bear, it probably takes a lot to freak out.
Until, that is, a certain bird appears.
It’s not just any bird that strikes fear into the heart of Aussies. The cassowary is one of the world’s largest birds, and it looks like a relic from another geologic era. It’s as tall as a person, has glossy black feathers and piercing eyes, walks on two feet, can weigh up to 140 pounds and has a large dagger-like claw on each foot.
“There’s just something primeval about them,” says Andrew Mack, who spent five years studying cassowaries in the wild in Papua New Guinea. “They look like living dinosaurs.”
Cassowaries are ratites, meaning they are flightless. They’ve also earned the dubious distinction of being “the world’s most dangerous bird.”
Its more famous flightless cousin, the emu, is one of Australia’s national symbols. But cassowaries, which mostly keep to themselves and live in the deep rainforest where they’re less likely to encounter humans, are now endangered.
While cassowaries are known for their dramatic appearance, they are also important parts of the ecosystem of the rainforest. As the world’s largest frugivore (fruit-eater), cassowaries eat and digest dozens of fruits every day, then poop them out, which helps seeds spread and regrow throughout the forest.
They are also the rare animal species where males do the majority of infant care. Female cassowaries lay eggs and then leave the nest, so males incubate the eggs and then raise the young chicks. They’re very protective of their young — some of the only non-food related encounters between humans and cassowaries occurred when a person got too close to the chicks.
Last year, a viral video showed a woman in Queensland trying to keep her McDonald’s burger out of the claws of a hungry cassowary.
While these creatures look large and intimidating, Peter Rowles says, “Many more cassowaries die from humans than humans die from cassowaries.”
Rowles is the founder of the Community for Coastal & Cassowary Conservation, shortened to “C4.” He is a longtime resident of Mission Beach, a seaside community in northern Queensland near the Daintree National Park, the primary Australian habitat for cassowaries.
“If you encounter a cassowary in the wild, first thing is put your hands behind your back,” he says.
“Be as boring as you can be, so you’re not attracting that cassowary’s attention. Move behind a tree. Just blend into the environment. Don’t scream and yell and wave your arms around. If you’ve got food in your hand, put it in your pocket, put it behind you, put it out of sight. It’s better to do that and be boring than to be seen as a potential source of more food.”
While a human who runs into a cassowary might feel the urge to run screaming in the opposite direction, that’s actually counterproductive.
Like their cousins the emus and ostriches, cassowaries are bipeds who can run as quickly as the average person.
And while it also may be tempting to drop your food before fleeing into the night, cassowary experts say that the woman in the viral video who wanted to keep her Big Mac for herself was doing the right thing.
A 2001 study in the Journal of Zoology cited humans giving food to cassowaries as the cause of 75% of dangerous encounters between the two species.
“The feeding of cassowaries appears to change their natural behavior, making them bold and aggressive,” study author Christopher P. Kofron wrote, adding that “in the single fatal attack, the victim was trying to kill the cassowary.”
In Papua New Guinea, cassowaries are not a protected species and locals will roast and eat the birds if they catch them. The cassowaries there are the smaller dwarf species.
Rowles suggests that humans who want to keep far away from cassowaries while visiting tropical Queensland avoid black or dark blue cars — in the past, cassowaries have seen themselves reflected in the metal and freaked out, thinking a rival bird was nearby. They sometimes have similar reactions around mirrors or glazed windows, so locals in Mission Beach put up screens to block the glare.
When C4 was first founded, the team put up a statue of a male cassowary outside their office. A female cassowary then showed up, trying to “court” the male. She took his “rejection” rather personally.
“On the third day, (she) basically said, ‘Well, if you’re not going to mate with me, then you’re a competitor in my space,’ and proceeded to kick our poor old fiberglass cassowary and basically punctured it in the chest and beat it down.”
The repaired statue now lives in a safer space, inside the C4 office.
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