Cassowary | Hacker News Reader

Cassowary

en.wikipedia.org

I live in a place with cassowaries and come across them in the wild every now and then. They're usually extremely dangerous, except for this one particular bird that lives at a rainforested beach called Etty bay. I have been chased by this bird, around a table while he tried to get my bag full of fruit - but generally speaking he/she is usually pretty chill and content to just stroll up and down the beach amongst the families, seeing what's up. Obviously this is a total tragedy .. she'll certainly end up getting killed because of the familiarity, but it's also entirely fascinating seeing this 1.5m tall wild bird just stroll out of the rainforest and start interacting with everyone.

She loves banana peels, too!

Not to be confused with Cassowary constraint solving [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary_(software)] for constraint-based autolayouts.

Always thought it would be nice to reenvision web apps to have a greatly simplified UI language using Cassowary constraints, automated databinding e2e, and just overall focusing less on minute pixel-perfect details for the frontend.

> overall focusing less on minute pixel-perfect details for the frontend

Turns out the presence of a real cassowary has the same effect on people too!

If you put a cassowary in a meeting room with a team of developers they tend to say things like "wow look out for that beak" and "that claw sure looks sharp" instead of being concerned with pixel perfect frontends. One of those strange quirks of the human psyche.

Joking aside. I like cassowaries because I imagine seeing one is the closest I will ever get to see something like a Velociraptor. (I know they are not meat eaters, but still. The closest analog I will ever likely meet.)

> As for eating the cassowary, it is supposed to be quite tough. Australian administrative officers stationed in New Guinea were advised that it "should be cooked with a stone in the pot: when the stone is ready to eat, so is the cassowary"

World’s deadliest bird was raised by people 18,000 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28834381 - Oct 2021 (19 comments)

The Cassowary: World’s most dangerous bird (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19829460 - May 2019 (45 comments)

Had never heard of Cassowary until I played Far Cry 3.

My experience, albeit in a video game, established the extreme danger these animals present.

Same for me, but it was FC3 Blood Dragon. It was kinda weird to back track from cyborg cassowary to real cassowary.

Don’t mess with a Cassowary. Fairly rare to see them in the wild outside a few places, but they give no grace. The ones in captivity will 100% have a go at you if you get too close to the fence.

yeah i went on holiday over to the east and saw one of these things up close.

I never pissed it off, and I never would... they're mean looking birds. you can just feel the menace on them...

Beautiful Plumage though :-)

They told us it’s super rare to see them. Yet when we were in Australia, we spotted two in separate spots within a week or so. Maybe we got very lucky or the encounters happen more frequently than people think.

In any case, fascinating birds. Feels a bit like seeing a small dinosaur. A living one!

Related, and more interesting (to me): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_syndrome

I like that the "See Also" section links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corythoraptor

Indeed, cassowaries are the closest things to bipedal dinosaurs that we have.

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