Cassowary Size Guide: Their Height, Weight, and Record Size

Cassowaries are giant birds native to Australia, New Guinea, and Indonesia. They are striking-looking birds, almost dinosaur-like with razor-sharp claws on their feet and helmet-like structures called casques on their heads. So, you might be wondering whether cassowaries are the largest birds in the world, how large they can grow, and how big the largest cassowary on record is. We’ll dig into all the details and more below.

Cassowary Size: How Tall Do They Get and How Much Do They Weigh?

Cassowaries are solitary and live in isolated forest habitats, which leads to surprisingly little being known about the species. They belong to the clade Palaeognathae, which includes other mostly flightless birds like ostriches. Overall, less than 1% of birds belong to this rare collection of flightless species. Although they can’t fly, their long, powerful legs can propel them forward at high speeds similar to emus.

The largest cassowary species is the southern cassowary. Southern cassowaries typically average around 5.6 feet. Females are larger than males, weighing up to 170 pounds, while males weigh about 120 pounds. Northern cassowaries are slightly smaller at only around five feet in height. Female northern cassowaries are also larger than the males. The females weigh around 120 pounds, while males reach a maximum of about 80 pounds.

Another species of cassowary is the dwarf cassowary, which lives further inland up in the mountains. This species doesn’t reach anywhere near the size of its southern and northern neighbors. Dwarf cassowaries only grow to around 3.5 feet and reach a maximum weight of about 39-60 pounds, with females being larger.

The Largest Cassowary Ever Recorded

Cassowaries regularly reach heights near six feet and weigh over 150 pounds. However, the largest cassowary on record is a female southern cassowary that weighed 187 pounds. Information provided by the Queensland, Australia government indicates that the tallest individuals can reach heights of 6.5 feet.

How Does the Cassowary Compare to Other Birds?

While cassowaries are extremely large, they’ll have to settle for third place, at least in some respects. The largest bird in the world is the ostrich, which grows to heights of up to nine feet and reaches weights of up to 320 pounds. Emus claim a slight advantage when it comes to average height, which is about 5.7 feet to the cassowary’s average of around 5.6 feet. However, the cassowary outweighs the emu by as much as 50 pounds. The cassowary’s kick is also said to have twice the weight behind it.

In the not-so-distant past, the cassowary would have had even more competition. The elephant bird that lived in Madagascar reached up to 1,600 pounds or about five times the size of the largest ostriches. Believe it or not, these gigantic birds only went extinct about 1,000 years ago due to human hunting.

Another large, flightless bird was the moa, which suffered a similar fate. Human settlers first arrived in New Zealand in about 1,300 CE, and fossil evidence shows moas were extinct only about 100 years later. Moas were believed to have weighed over 500 pounds, making them about four times the size of an average female southern cassowary.