Meet Cassowary, The World’s Most Dangerous Bird

You might never think that this bird is dangerous, even becomes the most dangerous bird in the world. You might think that eagle is the most dangerous bird ever, but it turns out that the fact is cassowary is the world’s most dangerous bird. Together with ostriches as well, cassowary is able to kill humans.

But, how can a cassowary kill humans? Cassowary is a flightless bird then how it can attack humans. It is a member of the flightless birds. You might forget that cassowary is a big bird that can kick, peck, barge and head-butt.

Cassowary does not commonly attack humans, but when it is triggered or provoked by food, it will instantly attack. Cassowary will be likely to attack while protecting its eggs and chicks.

Let’s meet cassowary as the world’s most dangerous bird and its characteristics.

• Characteristics

Cassowary is a type of bird that is similar to the emu, but it is not the member of the emu family. Cassowary has flat breastbones and is flightless. It is known for having bristly feathers, blue face, a duo red flaps of skin called wattles which hang from its neck and a casque atop of its head. It is native to the tropical forest of Australia and Southeast Asia. You can also take a look at the other animals to see in Australia.

Regarding to size, cassowary is a very big bird. There are 3 types of cassowary called the Southern, Northern and the Dwarf. The adult cassowary can reach up to 6 feet 6 inches or 2 meters tall and weigh around 132 pounds or 60 kilograms. It is as heavy as human, isn’t it?

The part of the body that makes it become dangerous is the leg. Cassowary has muscular legs with three claw-tipped toes that can give you a pretty strong punch. It can even lead to lethal wounds to internal organs and bleeding. The cassowary will use these claws to kick the victims powerfully to defend itself.

• Why do they attack or kill?

This bird won’t attack, unless there are some underlying reasons that provoke their attack. Here are the reasons why they attack or kill.

Cassowaries mostly attack due to association of food with humans. Some attacks happened because of the presence of human on the area where the cassowaries were feeding.

A study conducted by Christopher Kofron in 1999 stated that there are 221 recorded attacks by cassowary. Most cases happened because of soliciting food by the cassowary.

It happened when the humans were feeding the cassowaries and some of them acted boldly and aggressively chasing the people expecting them to be fed, and tended to attack when there was no food offered.

Some other cases were caused by defensive behavior, they want to protect their territory as well as their eggs and chicks. There is a case of McClean’s death (1926) that was caused by the cassowary. However, it happened because of the provoked attack by McClean himself and his dog: he struck the bird willing to kill it.

Cassowaries also tend to attack by kicking or pecking at doors and windows, even breaking the panes of glass or screen panels. There is an assumption that while they are facing the screen or glass panels, they seem to see another cassowary. They will also attack or chase cars because cars are associated with humans with food.

Dog is also one of the creature that cassowaries hate. It is presumably because wild dogs often prey on them. Between 1996 and 1997, it was reported that 6 cassowaries were killed by dogs in the Cairns area and 35 cassowaries attacked dogs due to self-defense.

Wild or feral dog can be adopted as pets, check the ways how to tame and adopt semi feral dog.

• Interesting facts about this world’s most dangerous bird

Cassowaries have some more interesting facts to be known. Here are the interesting facts:

1. They are commonly mistaken as the emus. They are not, though they share the same scientific order, but they belong to different scientific families.
2. Flightless because their feathers are not designed for flight. Cassowaries have dense, black feathers which are thin and long. If you see the feathers of cassowary, they look more like hair. Their feathers are not designed for flying, but they are very useful to prevent their body from getting wet and protect their body from sharp twigs and thorns.
3. Cassowary is the heaviest bird in Australia and the second heaviest bird in the world after ostrich. Despite their heavy body, they have very small wings. Southern female cassowaries can weigh up to 79 kilograms while the smallest one is the male Dwarf which can reach 18 kilograms.
4. Something atop their head is called casque. A casque is made of keratin which composes the nails, feathers and beak. The outer cover is hard, the inside, however, is very porous. There is no exact information about the use of this casque for the cassowary.
5. They feed on fruits, they are called frugivores. As they eat fruits, they will walk around and pass the seeds through their digestive tract. Once they drop the deposit seeds, they will help to spread the diversity of plants in their region.  

If you are interested to know more about other types of birds, you can spend time reading birds with beautiful feathers and endangered birds around the world.