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The Cassowary: World’s most dangerous bird (2016)

smithsonianmag.com

11–20 of 49 posts

Re: The Cassowary: World’s most dangerous bird (2016)

#12

Seeing a cassowary up close really feels like being able to see a dinosaur. They've got those three-toed dinosaur feet with legs as thick as yours, giant yellow saucer eyes, iridescent skin and a weird head horn. It watches back at you. You really feel like you're looking at a dinosaur. Only thing it's missing is the teeth and maybe forelimbs. Otherwise it's like 80% of a dinosaur.

It looks pretty much (including the toothless beak) just the way a medium-large oviraptosaur would look like, at least in my mind.

Re: The Cassowary: World’s most dangerous bird (2016)

#13

Seeing a cassowary up close really feels like being able to see a dinosaur. They've got those three-toed dinosaur feet with legs as thick as yours, giant yellow saucer eyes, iridescent skin and a weird head horn. It watches back at you. You really feel like you're looking at a dinosaur. Only thing it's missing is the teeth and maybe forelimbs. Otherwise it's like 80% of a dinosaur.

All birds are dinosaurs.

Re: The Cassowary: World’s most dangerous bird (2016)

#14

Seeing a cassowary up close really feels like being able to see a dinosaur. They've got those three-toed dinosaur feet with legs as thick as yours, giant yellow saucer eyes, iridescent skin and a weird head horn. It watches back at you. You really feel like you're looking at a dinosaur. Only thing it's missing is the teeth and maybe forelimbs. Otherwise it's like 80% of a dinosaur.

Yeah, we have one (or maybe two?) at our local zoo and the setup is such that I was able to be eye-to-eye with one of them from less than two feet. That thing held my gaze with zero fear whatsoever of me. Unbelievable experience. It's a freakin' war machine. And strikingly beautiful as well.

Re: The Cassowary: World’s most dangerous bird (2016)

#15

Seeing a cassowary up close really feels like being able to see a dinosaur. They've got those three-toed dinosaur feet with legs as thick as yours, giant yellow saucer eyes, iridescent skin and a weird head horn. It watches back at you. You really feel like you're looking at a dinosaur. Only thing it's missing is the teeth and maybe forelimbs. Otherwise it's like 80% of a dinosaur.

All birds are dinosaurs.

I suspect that most people know that - it's just that the cassowary looks a lot more like our notion of a dinosaur than other birds.

Re: The Cassowary: World’s most dangerous bird (2016)

#16
Bulmer's essay, "Why the Cassowary is not a bird" was the first item on the reading list for my first year undergraduate Sociology course back in 1980 in which he argues "The cassowary is not a bird because it enjoys a unique relationship in Karam thought to man." The Karam are the people of the upper Kaironk Valley in the Schrader Mountains of New Guinea to whom the Cassowary has totemic significance.

Re: The Cassowary: World’s most dangerous bird (2016)

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All birds are dinosaurs.

I suspect that most people know that - it's just that the cassowary looks a lot more like our notion of a dinosaur than other birds.

And hopefully your local parakeet isn't trying to disembowel you...

Re: The Cassowary: World’s most dangerous bird (2016)

#20

Seeing a cassowary up close really feels like being able to see a dinosaur. They've got those three-toed dinosaur feet with legs as thick as yours, giant yellow saucer eyes, iridescent skin and a weird head horn. It watches back at you. You really feel like you're looking at a dinosaur. Only thing it's missing is the teeth and maybe forelimbs. Otherwise it's like 80% of a dinosaur.

And the feet. Compare the feet of a Cassowary to that of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
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