Cassowary

Though it’s true these birds will attack humans, they seem to only do so when they’re provoked, frightened, defending eggs or chicks, or under attack themselves.

The cassowary is a type of ratite, which is a long-legged, usually large, flightless bird. Its wings are nearly vestigial and only have a few quills. The feathers of the cassowary are coarse, and some of them contain hair-like filaments. Because of this, the cassowary was hunted and raised for its feathers. Females are bigger than males, and the bright colors of their heads and necks are more vivid. Even more striking is the knifelike claw on the inner toe of each foot, which is at least as formidable as the talons of the most powerful bird of prey.

5 Amazing Cassowary Facts

• The male bird raises the chicks, and he is especially dangerous in parent mode. He won’t hesitate to use his claws on predators and other threats.
• The female mates with two or three males in a season. She lays her eggs in their nest after mating, then moves on.
• Biologists once believed cassowaries used the hard casques located on the top of their heads to push through the undergrowth in their rainforest habitat, but now they’re not so sure of the casques’ function.
• The bird has a wide range of vocalizations, including booms, hisses, rumbles, and roars.
• A dinosaur closely resembling a cassowary was recently discovered! The two species aren’t directly related, although as cassowary relatives first evolved 60 million years ago, they have ancient traits found in few animals today.

Classification and Scientific Name

Cassowaries belong to the genus Casuarius. Casuarius is from two Papuan words, with “kasu” meaning horned and “weri” translating to head. This refers to the bird’s casque, a hollow, horn-shaped structure made of keratin affixed to the top of its head. While scientists initially thought the casque was used to help them move through their dense habitat, it’s now believed it serves other functions, such as for defensive purposes in territory disputes, a secondary sexual characteristic, a way to regulate their temperature, or to amplify the low-frequency sounds that cassowaries use to communicate.

3 Types of Cassowaries

There are three species of cassowaries. They are:

• Southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius): The southern cassowary, or double-wattled cassowary. is the largest of the species and the third-largest bird in the world after its cousin, the emu, and the ostrich. It can be found in southern New Guinea, Australia’s northeastern regions, and the lowlands of the Aru Islands.
• Northern cassowary (Casuarius unappendiculatus): Also called the single-wattled cassowary because it has only one wattle as compared to the southern cassowary’s two. It lives in northern New Guinea’s coastal swamplands and lowland rainforests. Populations are also found on the islands of Waigeo, Batanta, Yapen, and Salawati.
• Dwarf cassowary (Casuarius bennetti): This smaller species is also known as Bennett’s cassowary after the scientist George Bennett, who examined the bird and realized it was a new species of cassowary. It is present in New Guinea, Yapen Island, and New Britain in higher elevations than the northern or southern cassowaries.

There was a fourth species, the pygmy cassowary or small cassowary (Casuarius lydekkeri), but it is extinct. Some subspecies of the extant birds have been suggested, but none have been confirmed.

Evolution and Origins

The cassowary is one of the closest extant relatives of dinosaurs, and its descendants are believed to have evolved following the dinosaurs’ extinction around 60 million years ago. Scientific research published in 2017 revealed that a new dinosaur species named Corythoraptor jacobsi looked very much like the cassowary due to the crest on its skull.

Cassowaries are ratites and one of 60 flightless bird species, which includes the emu, kiwi, the extinct moa, and the extinct elephant bird that lived in Madagascar during the Pleistocene (2.58 million years to 11,700 years ago) and Holocene (11,650 years ago to the present).

Fossil evidence of the extinct pygmy cassowary species found in the Australian state of New South Wales and in Papua New Guinea dates to the Pleistocene.

Researchers determined in a 2021 study that early humans in the Late Pleistocene epoch (between 129,000 and 11,700 years ago) harvested and ate the cassowary’s eggs. Examining egg fragments from 6,000 to 18,000 years old found in the rainforests of New Guinea, they realized that many fragments had been burned and broken before the birds’ natural hatching stages, suggesting that humans were disrupting the maturity process, likely to use the eggs as a food source. Scientists believe it could be possible that these people kept cassowaries as pets and raised them for their eggs, much like we do chickens.

Appearance

The southern cassowary can grow between 40 and 72 inches in length, 75 inches in height, and 187 pounds in weight. Its head is topped with a horny casque that grows to between 5 and 7 inches tall and grows with the bird. It is possible to estimate the age of a grown bird by the size of its casque. The bird has a bright blue head and a red neck that bears two red wattles. Each long, scaly leg ends in a three-toed foot whose inner toe bears that lethal claw, which can be 4.7 inches long.

The northern cassowary is known for its orange-gold or red neck and single wattle. It is built along the same lines as the southern cassowary, but is a bit smaller in height and lighter in weight, with the females weighing about 128 pounds.

As its name suggests, the dwarf cassowary is the smallest species, but it is not small. Physical features include a body that’s 3 to 5 feet long and 39 to 53 inches in height. It weighs between 39 and 57 pounds. Its triangular casque is smaller than those of the northern and southern cassowaries in proportion to its body. It has a bright blue and red neck and pink cheeks.

Behavior

Cassowaries can jump 7 feet in the air from a standstill and run up to 31 mph.

The southern cassowary is shy and solitary and will chase other cassowaries away except during the mating season.

Despite that famous claw, it is not used to grab prey the way raptors use their talons.

Though these birds will indeed attack humans, they seem to only do so when they’re provoked, frightened, defending eggs or chicks, or under attack themselves. Some cassowaries associate humans with food and will simply jump at a human in expectation of a meal.

Cassowaries have been called “the most dangerous birds in the world” by publications such as The Guinness Book of World Records. That claim comes in part because there have been two recorded human fatalities and more than 200 incidents with cassowaries.

Overall, cassowary attacks are rare. Most have come because people tried feeding cassowaries, and most incidents involve the birds charging. However, if a person falls to the ground, cassowaries can be quite dangerous. Their dagger-like claws can grow up to 5 inches and cause severe wounds or even death.

Habitat

These birds are found in New Guinea — which includes Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Seram, an island that is part of Indonesia — as well as the northeastern part of Australia, and the Aru Islands that lie between New Guinea and Australia.

Though they are large birds, they are secretive and hard to find in their tropical rainforest habitats. They are known to live in the Paluma Range National Park, the McIlwraith Range National Park, and the Jardine River National Park in Australia.

Fortunately, there are a number of zoos around the world that exhibit cassowaries. Among them are:

• The San Diego Zoo
• The Perth Zoo
• The National Zoo

Diet

The cassowary eats fruit that has fallen to the ground, berries, mushrooms and other fungi, plant materials, and small vertebrates like lizards. It is capable of eating plant matter that will poison other animals because the food goes through their digestive system very quickly. They’ll also eat small reptiles and amphibians, rats and mice, snails, and insects.

They will also eat carrion, and babies eat the feces of their fathers and siblings. Indeed, grown birds are known to eat their own feces if they still have undigested fruit.

Predators and Threats

The biggest threat to these birds is humans. Humans kill them for their meat and their feathers, and inadvertently kill them on the highways.

Their chicks, which drop at any sign of danger, are eaten by dogs and pigs. Pigs also eat their eggs, and the cassowary’s habitat has been fragmented and destroyed by logging and development.

Other things that threaten cassowaries are diseases and natural disasters such as typhoons.

Reproduction, Babies, and Lifespan

The breeding season for cassowaries occurs in winter and spring. Males will claim a territory and build a nest upon fallen leaves on the ground that is shallow but sometimes lined with leaves or grass. The male will court a female by vocalizing and inflating his throat and dancing while she watches. If she accepts him and doesn’t drive him off, she’ll sit on the ground, and they’ll mate. She will then lay four to six green eggs in his nest, with the color due to a pigment called biliverdin found in the shells, providing camouflage. When she’s done, he’ll chase her off and incubate the eggs himself for about 47 to 56 days. In the meantime, the female will find another male. She’ll lay as many as 20 eggs before she’s through.

Baby cassowaries stay with their fathers for nine months or until their first molt, though they will be three years old before they have grown-up plumage. Some chicks stay with their fathers for as long as 18 months. The baby cassowaries are covered with brown down with black streaks. The father becomes very aggressive if he feels the chicks are under threat from predators.

Female cassowaries are sexually mature when they are two, and males are mature when they are three. After that, they can reproduce for decades. Females can breed until they’re about 40, and males until they’re about 35. The oldest cassowary known lived to be at least 61 years old.

Population and Conservation

Scientists aren’t completely sure how many cassowaries are in the wild, but the status of all species according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is of Least Concern.

There are an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 southern cassowaries and up to 20,000 northern cassowaries. The population of the dwarf cassowary is unknown. The populations of all three species are declining.