Are Facts about Cassowaries familliar to you?Cassowaries are ratites (flightless birds without a keel on their sternum bone) that are native to the tropical forests of New Guinea (Papua New Guinea and Indonesia), East Nusa Tenggara, the Maluku Islands, and northeastern Australia.There are three extant species. The most common of these, the southern cassowary, is the third-tallest and second-heaviest living bird, smaller only than the ostrich and emu.
Facts about Cassowaries 1:Taxonomy
The genus Casuarius was erected by the French scientist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in his Ornithologie published in 1760.The type species is the southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius). The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus put the southern cassowary together with the common ostrich and the greater rhea in the genus Struthio.
Facts about Cassowaries 2:Physical Charactersitics
Physical Charactersitics
The southern cassowary of the far north Queensland,females are bigger and more brightly coloured. Adult southern cassowaries are 1.5 to 1.8 m (5–6 ft) tall, although some females may reach 2 m (6.6 ft), and weigh 58.5 kg (130 lb).All cassowaries have feathers that consist of a shaft and loose barbules. They do not have retrices (tail feathers) or a preen gland.
Facts about Cassowaries 3:Habitat
assowaries are native to the humid rainforests of New Guinea and nearby smaller islands, and northeastern Australia.They will, however, venture out into palm scrub, grassland, savanna, and swamp forest.
Facts about Cassowaries 4:Reproduction
Females lay three to eight large, bright green or pale green-blue eggs in each clutch into a prepared heap of leaf litter.The male incubates the eggs for 50–52 days, removing or adding litter to regulate the temperature, then protects the chicks, who stay in the nest for about nine months, defending them fiercely against all potential predators, including humans. The young males then go off to find a territory of their own.
Facts about Cassowaries 5: Keystone Species
A keystone species is a species that has a disproportionately large effect on its natural environment relative to its abundance.Cassowaries are a keystone species of rain forests because they eat fallen fruit whole and distribute seeds across the jungle floor via excrement.
Facts about Cassowaries 6:Diet
Cassowaries food
Cassowaries are predominantly frugivorous. Besides fruits, their diet includes flowers, fungi, snails, insects, frogs, birds, fish, rats, mice, and carrion. Fruit from at least 26 plant families has been documented in the diet of cassowaries. Fruits from the laurel, podocarp, palm, wild grape, nightshade, and myrtle families are important items in the diet
Facts about Cassowaries 7:Cassowaries versus Feral Pigs
Feral pig numbers in the world-heritage listed Daintree Rainforest in far north Queensland are out of control,they are eating the eggs and chicks as they compete for food.
Facts about Cassowaries 8:Conservation
The Southern Cassowary is endangered and is now under increased threat from loss of habitat due to development, cars, dog attacks and natural disasters.The Southern Cassowary is a direct descendent of the dinosaurs.
Facts about Cassowaries 9: Weltvogelpark Walsrode
Weltvogelpark Walsrode is the largest bird park in the world in terms of species as well as land area. park located in the middle of the Lüneburg Heath in North Germany within the municipality of Bomlitz
Facts about Cassowaries 10:Attacks on Human
Attacks on Human
The commonest injuries they cause in humans are puncture wounds, lacerations and bone fractures. Serious injuries resulting from cassowary attacks are most likely to occur if the person is crouching or is lying or has fallen on the ground.
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