cassowaries

This is a place of frogs, bowerbirds, cockatoos and parrots, where 120 pound flightless birds called cassowaries are king and wild pigs roam free.

Danna Harman: Searching for Cannibals Danna Harman 2010

This is a place of frogs, bowerbirds, cockatoos and parrots, where 120 pound flightless birds called cassowaries are king and wild pigs roam free.

Danna Harman: Searching for Cannibals Danna Harman 2010

This is a place of frogs, bowerbirds, cockatoos and parrots, where 120 pound flightless birds called cassowaries are king and wild pigs roam free.

Danna Harman: Searching for Cannibals Danna Harman 2010

This is a place of frogs, bowerbirds, cockatoos and parrots, where 120 pound flightless birds called cassowaries are king and wild pigs roam free.

Danna Harman: Searching for Cannibals Danna Harman 2010

This is a place of frogs, bowerbirds, cockatoos and parrots, where 120 pound flightless birds called cassowaries are king and wild pigs roam free.

Danna Harman: Searching for Cannibals Danna Harman 2010

He has been studying the cassowaries here, in this six-square-kilometer tract of Wooroonooran National Park, for twelve years.

Birdology Sy Montgomery 2010

And for many dozens of fruiting species, cassowaries are the only creatures in the forest doing so; most of the seeds that pass through their gut are so big no other animal could possibly swallow them.

Birdology Sy Montgomery 2010

But when the cassowaries do, they transport seeds, in some cases hundreds of meters away from the parent plant, often uphill, where the seeds could never roll on their own, and essentially plant them in a neat packet of fertilizer.

Birdology Sy Montgomery 2010

A mangrove swamp might seem odd habitat for a cassowary, but records from the 1930s report sightings of cassowaries sitting in shallow mangrove water, letting fish swim into their long, bristle-like feathers.

Birdology Sy Montgomery 2010

Local people know cassowaries well, for they hunt them.

Birdology Sy Montgomery 2010