Animal · Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Australia
Southern cassowary
Casuarius casuarius — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The southern cassowary is a flightless rainforest bird as tall as an adult person, with a bony helmet on its head and a bright blue neck. It swallows fruit whole and spreads the seeds through the forest.
Picture credit: Dominic Sherony (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Joseph C Boone (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Summerdrought (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the southern cassowary live?
Home: Rainforests of New Guinea and northeast Australia.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Australia.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: 1.5-1.8 m tall, females larger than males. It weighs about 45 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
A cassowary walks alone through the rainforest and looks for fallen fruit, which makes up almost all of its food. It can swallow fruits that are poisonous to other animals, and the seeds come out again far from the parent tree, so whole parts of the forest grow from what a cassowary has eaten. The helmet on its head is made of bone covered in horn, and scientists are still arguing about what it is for: pushing through branches, showing off, or hearing deep calls. The male does the family work, sitting on three to five pea-green eggs for about fifty days and then leading the striped chicks for almost a year. A cassowary would rather walk away than fight, but its inner toe carries a claw the length of a finger, so people in Queensland are asked never to feed one.
Find it on the globe
Southern cassowary is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Is the southern cassowary dangerous?
It can be, but attacks are rare and only two deaths have been recorded since 1900. Almost all attacks involve birds that people have fed, so the safest thing is to keep a distance and never offer food.
Why does a cassowary have a helmet?
Nobody is quite sure. The casque is bone with a horny cover, and researchers think it may help push through thick branches, show how old and strong a bird is, or pick up the very deep booming calls cassowaries make.
Can a cassowary fly or run?
It cannot fly at all, because its wings are tiny and its feathers hang like loose hair. On the ground it is fast and can also jump and swim well, crossing rivers when it needs to.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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