I was scrolling through Reddit when I came across an interesting article about cassowaries, birds. The original post claimed that these birds are capable of killing humans. To me, they just look like extremely stylish ostriches. Maybe also like how you would imagine in a video game where you have all the customization options—colors and such—so the animal doesn’t really look like a typical one.
Anyway, I decided to Google it, and sure enough, these birds can kill humans. They attack with their legs. There’s a case from 1926 where a boy attacked the bird with a stick and was fatally wounded by its claws. The claws can be over 12 cm long, basically like knives.
If I had been in the situation of that woman, I probably wouldn’t have even realized the danger, because I had never seen this bird or its kind in my life, let alone would have assumed it was dangerous. I guess the woman must have felt the same way. And this is both the blessing and the curse of the internet. Now this knowledge is in my brain, though it doesn’t really help me—except for the fact that if I ever encounter such a bird, I’ll be terrified before I even get a chance to appreciate its beauty. Assuming, of course, one finds the bird beautiful.
In Florida, in early 2019, there was also a fatality where a 75-year-old man, who had raised the cassowary, died. I’m still more than surprised that these creatures exist in the world, and especially, how strange they look.
You just have to imagine a bird standing in front of you that’s 1.50 to 1.80 meters tall, with 12 cm long claws, and if it kicks someone, that person could die from it. Especially because the bird looks relatively harmless. Because of this, it has earned the title of the world’s most dangerous bird, and is described that way in some books.
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