World’s deadliest bird was raised by people 18,000 years ago
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I do remember this Awl article from a while back:
Some men shoot tigers. Some men love bears. Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Major in the Yeomanry, Conservative MP for Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, heir to one of the greatest banking fortunes in history, and collector of the largest zoological collection ever amassed in private hands, had a specific and incurable addiction to cassowaries. He bred them. He stuffed them. He gathered living representatives of every known species and sub-species at his parents’ manor house in Hertfordshire. Bewitched by their beautiful and highly variable neck wattles, he identified new species where there were none. He wrote a book, A Monograph of the Genus Casuarius, about them and made excuses for them, and he could never get enough.
https://www.theawl.com/2016/04/a-natural-history-of-walter-r...
I can confirm that it is a big bugger and had big fat legs.
The hairy-nosed wombat is another Australian animal that is cute and cuddly as a baby, but turn aggressive on reaching adulthood.
Which, uh, obviously doesn't fit their reputation.
If you visit on a day that isn't too busy around the time of the keeper talk, they'll let you feed the cassowary for a small donation. You have to do it from outside of the pen though.