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BBC News
6 days ago
- Science
- BBC News
'It's just a weird, weird bird': Why we got the dodo so absurdly wrong
The extinct flightless pigeon has captured imaginations for over 400 years. Experts and artists are now revealing how much we have distorted what the dodo was really like – nimble and slender, with a formidable beak. When Karen Fawcett embarked on creating as accurate a model of a dodo as possible, she knew she was taking on a serious challenge. As a palaeoartist, who creates artworks of prehistoric life based on scientific evidence, Fawcett is used to not relying on photographs to guide her work. But information on the dodo was especially scarce, she says. "I've never seen this bird, and all I've got is some little tantalising clues about what it was like and… artist drawings and paintings of dodos," says Fawcett, who created the dodo model in her studio in Durham, UK, in 2019. These artists often hadn't even seen a dodo themselves, she says, or were painting from taxidermy models or unhappy, captive birds in European menageries. The dodo's unusually small wings and large feet were also a challenge, she says: everything about it was "almost upside down" compared to modern birds. It all made the task all the more tantalising, though. "The dodo, it's so iconic, everybody knows what it is," she says. "I mean, there's even an emoji of a dodo on a phone. Yet nobody has seen one." From the first encounter with dodos by Dutch sailors on the island of Mauritius in 1598 to their extinction a century later, there are plenty of depictions of this unusual ground-dwelling bird (which was, in fact, a large flightless pigeon). But disentangling truth from myth is tricky, especially when modern-day research has shown dodos were anything but the dumpy, clumsy, stupid birds so often represented. The dodo has long been seen as an iconic image of "our ability to just destroy things", says Neil Gostling, a palaeobiologist at the University of Southampton in the UK. But today, researchers like Gostling – and the occasional artist with a scientific eye, like Fawcett – are probing the past to uncover everything they can about the real dodo, from what it really looked like and behaved, to why it evolved as it did and how it ended up among the first human-caused extinctions in modern times. What they are discovering is firmly overturning the image of the dodo as a stupid, clumsy animal somehow destined for extinction. These scientists hope that finding out more about the dodo, and even scouring its genetics, could even help to address our current day extinction crisis. But fascinating as it is to pursue our long-lived obsession with the dodo, can it really tell us anything about wildlife, and how to save it, today? In unravelling the truth about the dodo, there's long been little to go on. Despite several live dodos being transported to Europe in the 17th Century, there are few remnants left anywhere today: an emaciated, mummified head known as the Oxford dodo along with a piece of skin once attached to this (these are the only surviving soft tissue); the remains of a feather; a head in Copenhagen; part of a beak in Prague; and plaster casts of a mouldy foot, itself lost sometime in the 19th Century. Julian Hume, an artist and avian palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London who has published nearly 40 papers on the dodo, reckons he is the only person to have illustrated all these surviving parts of the bird. As well as these, he says, there are perhaps some 20 or 25 fossilised skeletons with some kind of skull material. But all of these, bar two near-complete skeletons from single individuals and a third partial one, are composite skeletons made from a jumble of bones from different dodos. Apart from this, all we have are paintings from the time the dodo was alive, largely from taxidermy or captive birds. We also have a lot of inherited misbeliefs. The dodo began capturing imaginations almost as soon as it was discovered in the 16th Century. "It's just a weird, weird bird," says Gostling. "It would have stood nearly a metre tall (3.3ft)… No one would have seen anything like it in Europe, just this remarkable animal. I think people took to it." The biggest misconception of the dodo is "that it's sort of fat, stupid and deserved to go extinct", says Gostling. "It wasn't. It was adapted to its environment, and it had been doing very well… The thing that it wasn't adapted to were rats, cats, pigs and goats, and obviously people." And it's only really in the last decade that people have started to question the negative image of the dodo, says Gostling. "It's so pervasive." Fawcett's sculpture, he says, is the most accurate model yet made. Before she began working on it in 2019, Fawcett spent years finding out all she could about the dodo. She soon learned that many depictions were best left avoided. Among them was the famous dodo painting by Dutch artist Roelant Savery, painted in the 1620s. "I can tell you, there's lots wrong with that," she says. "It's more [like a] swan", she says: pigeons don't have "this bulbous, sticky-out bit at the front" of the neck. "And the belly on it... it's just obese, basically." Savery is thought to have worked off a bad taxidermy bird, and apparently wildly exaggerated some features, but his depiction became the world's most well-known dodo image. It was the basis for the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland dodo illustration in 1865, which propelled the dodo to even more fame in the Victorian era. "That [idea] continued to the present day," says Gostling. "You can ask anybody, they'll know what a dodo is, and they'll draw this round bird with a funny beak and waddly feet… And it's absolutely wrong." It didn't help, of course, that the first detailed scientific description of the dodo was only published in 1848, centuries after it went extinct. And even this was still 10 years before the theory of evolution was published, the first step to understanding how the dodo was, in fact, expertly adapted to its environment. A lot of scientists at the time took the exaggerated illustrations "as actual fact, because there was nothing else to go on", says Hume. The first reconstruction of a dodo's skeleton, for example, squeezed it into the outline of Savery's painting. A few apparently accurate – but less famous – contemporaneous depictions do exist, though. Some were drawn by a Dutch sailor in the first decades of the 1600s. "They are the best drawings ever of dodos, and they were the only drawings done on Mauritian soil," says Hume. The drawings depict a more upright and slender bird than in Savery's paintings. Fawcett used these sketches to create her dodo's head, along with a replica of the mummified Oxford dodo's head and some cast skulls. Unlike some depictions, they also show a particularly hooked beak, says Fawcett (it's thought to have been a formidable weapon). Another good source was the 1625 painting by Mughal artist Ustad Mansur of a live dodo kept in a Hindustan emperor's menagerie which Fawcett used for features like colouration (it shows the dodo as having a brownish-grey colour). As the painting includes other birds still found today in the menagerie, she was able to cross-reference for accuracy. For other details, live pigeons themselves were a handy source, adds Fawcett. "I often looked at Pidge," she says of her daughter's pet pigeon, useful in modelling finer details like how the eyelids look on a pigeon. She also used baby pigeons to model how the flightless dodo's tiny vestigial wings may have looked. Scientists now think dodos used these for balance when moving at speed. Despite all the work to evidence her model, Fawcett acknowledges that "any form of palaeoart is a form of guesswork". It's a situation familiar to dodo researchers trying to scratch the surface of what the real dodo was like. "For probably one of the most famous birds in the world, we really don't know a lot in terms of facts," says Hume. Their ecology and population levels before humans arrived, for example, remain largely a mystery, he says. "There's so little to go on…It was such a short period of time when humans interacted with dodos." In a project launched last year, Hume, Gostling and a set of collaborators are now hoping to find out the truth about the dodo. To start things off, in a 2024 paper they assessed some 400 years of dodo literature, principally in an effort to classify it correctly. The task involved disentangling centuries of folk and sailors' stories from the truth. "You've got to remember, the sailors at the time would have been recording things like mermaids," says Gostling. At some point a completely fictional "white dodo" supposedly living on nearby Reunion island was invented. "There's all sorts, dodos here, there and everywhere," says Gostling. "No there weren't. The dodo [was] on Mauritius, and it's only ever been on Mauritius." It doesn't help that when the dodo did disappear, it was not even noticed until a century later. Even then people had trouble understanding it, says Hume. "This could not be, you know – it was God's creation," he says. Amidst the confusion it became common to believe the dodo had been a myth, he adds. "Suddenly dodos were no longer around, and people started going, well, was it a made-up bird?" The truth of how the dodo really disappeared continues to unravel to the present day. Diaries from the Dutch sailing vessels which encountered the dodo in its home territory show it was eaten by humans, but likely seldomly, as it was considered tough and less tasty than other available game on Mauritius. It's now believed it was animals brought by sailors that ultimately caused the dodo's demise. "The dodo laid a single egg in a nest on the ground, which made these eggs particularly vulnerable to predation by introduced species like rats and pigs, which arrived on Mauritius at the same time as people," says Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Rats would have also been serious competition for food, says Hume. It's not known how many dodos lived on Mauritius before people arrived there, says Hume, but accounts from the time tell us something of how the dodo behaved in its home habitat, with one noting "they could run very fast". Dodos, like other birds on the island, appeared relatively unafraid of people, and were easy for humans to catch when out in the open. But accounts say that the dodo was incredibly agile when it got between the rocks and the trees and would apparently "stand upright and run incredibly fast, and you couldn't catch it", says Gostling. Modern-day research is backing this up. In 2016, Hume and colleagues used laser surface scanning technology to digitally recreate – and correct the position of – the dodo skeleton housed in the Natural History Museum in Port Louis, Mauritius' capital. "I put the bones together, worked out the angles they would have been, and it brings the dodo up into that more upright, natural shape," he says. Hume and Gostling also both say their ongoing (as-yet unpublished) analysis of dodo's ankle bones has shown it has large scars where apparently large tendons and ligaments were attached. 'When we look at birds that have this giant tendon in their foot today… they're very fast runners, they're climbers," says Gostling. "And that's what the dodo was doing." It all comes together to reveal that the dodo was likely much taller, slimmer, lighter and more upright than commonly thought, with relatively long, strong legs and robust limbs which allowed it to manoeuvre quickly in its dense, rocky forest habitat. The dodo had no reason to fear humans, Shapiro notes, since it evolved on an island without predators. Much of Mauritius was extremely rocky at that time, adds Hume, and he believes that dodos had to get to the areas where the local giant tortoises, their competitors for food, couldn't. "So they evolved this ability to be manoeuvrable, get over those rocks and get to high peaks." Gostling, Hume and their collaborators now hope to find out more about how exactly the dodo operated in its environment. "Simply working out how they moved around it is a big question," says Gostling. "We are trying to really uncover this animal. And it's a bit of a detective story." They plan to build up the first accurate computer model of a moving dodo, recreating its musculature from the scars found on dodo bones – although funding has yet to be found for the project, says Hume. But even while these scientists are working to find out more about the extinct dodo, a more controversial avenue is pursued to recreate it: the dodo is among the targets of "de-extinction" by gene editing company Colossal Biosciences. (Read more about why scientists are concerned about de-extinction). In 2022, Shapiro, working with Colossal Biosciences, announced the sequencing of the dodo's complete genome, using a degraded DNA sample taken from a dodo skull. The results are as yet unpublished and still undergoing analysis, says Shapiro. She says the team's genetic research is "revealing the underlying DNA sequence variations that gave these birds their unique morphologies and allowing us to learn more about their evolutionary history and adaptation to their island habitats". The longer-term plan is to use genome editing to engineer the genome of a Nicobar pigeon, the dodo's closet living relative, to "express key traits that defined a dodo", says Shapiro: its larger size, flightlessness and the unique beak suitable for consuming large fruit. The goal, she says, is both to return the dodo to Mauritius and to develop biotechnologies to stop other birds from becoming extinct. (Few tools of modern genome engineering are applicable to birds, notes Shapiro, since they cannot be "cloned" in the same way mammals can due to differences in their reproductive systems.) More like this:• The dark secret behind the 'bison skull mountain'• The images showing 50 years of change on Earth• The moments of human history etched in nature Successfully creating a dodo-like bird would allow scientists to see how the dodo interacts with other species in the Mauritian habitats, says Shapiro, as well as learn more about how engineered DNA sequences manifest as differences in physical appearance and behaviour. She notes that the introduction of (non-native) giant tortoises on Mauritius (to replace the extinct Mauritian giant tortoises) has already helped to control introduced plant species and support native plants. Hume says he'd "love to be first in the queue if they ever bring the dodo back". But he believes it is still a long way off. "I don't think I'll ever see one in my lifetime," he says. "They're looking at ways of manipulating genes and trying to get it into the parent so it actually alters [the genes] before the egg develops. It would almost be a random shot in the dark, will this one come out with a big beak, this one comes out with small wings. And then you start cross breeding, it would never be a dodo, it'd be a mix match." Gostling also has doubts. "What Colossal is trying to do is take dodo genes and put them into the Nicobar pigeon and make a more dodo-like Nicobar pigeon. I don't know that that's really going to work." Still, says Hume, understanding the genetics of the dodo can be used "as a basis to understand a lot". "There's a lot of research to be done, and it's all quite exciting stuff." And learning how to tweak genes to increase genetic variability could indeed help other birds, he says. The pink pigeon, for example – the last surviving pigeon on Mauritius – is in dire need of help due to inbreeding, he says: tweaking its genes for more variability could help avoid it being wiped out. Perhaps the dodo's most lasting impact on humans is as the emblem of an extinction crisis that continues to accelerate today. What's sad, is that, unlike in the 17th Century, "we know now that we can wipe out species", says Gostling. "We know what the message is…we know what we need to do. We now need to do it." At this moment, notes Hume, another relative of the dodo, the tooth-billed pigeon on Samoa, is on the verge of extinction. "It's going to become like the dodo, there's so few left it's probably had it as a species, which is a tragedy," he says. Many birds around the world are "on the very edge of hanging on", Hume adds. According to one recent paper, assuming no change in the trajectory of human behaviour, more than 500 bird species could go extinct in the next century. Back in Fawcett's studio, after cutting a Styrofoam dodo body, altered replicas of the mouldy dodo foot, small wings and a carefully constructed head, she made a resin cast of the whole contraption to produce her final model. The best part, she says, was putting the eyes in. "When you put eyes in something, it gives it life." * Jocelyn Timperley is a senior journalist for BBC Future. Find her on Twitter @jloistf ** This article's fourth paragraph was corrected on 16/7/25 to note the dodo had small wings and large feet. It previously incorrectly stated the dodo had large wings and small feet. -- For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, Xand Instagram.
Zawya
15-07-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Mauritius' Economy Depends on Sustainable Public Finances
The island of Mauritius was once the native habitat of the dodo—a striking, flightless bird that went extinct in the face of unsustainable hunting by sailors. Today, the dodo is a national symbol for the country, representing the importance of conservation and sustainability efforts. Economies are also shaped by human action, including fiscal policy. Mauritius has a strong policy track record that has engendered a transition from an agricultural economy to a diversified upper-middle-income country. However, Mauritius now faces challenges from high public debt, significant public investment needs, low productivity, and an ageing society. To address them, fiscal policy would need to be recalibrated to preserve today's dodo: inclusive economic prosperity. Fiscal sustainability measures The Mauritian authorities recently announced their 2025-26 budget, which prioritizes reforms to support sustainable fiscal policy. These reforms aim to increase tax revenue by over two percent of GDP in 2025-26, while reducing government spending by over one percent of GDP in the same period. Overall, the authorities expect to reduce government debt from 87 percent of GDP in 2024 to 75 percent in 2030. Our recent annual economic health check of the island nation—our Article IV Staff Report and Selected Issues Papers —offers policy options to achieve sustainable fiscal policy in Mauritius, including (i) strengthening revenue mobilization, (ii) reforming the pension system, and (iii) increasing spending efficiency. The announced budget is in line with many of our proposed policy options. Increasing fiscal revenue Given that tax exemptions are high—they accounted for 4.6 percent of GDP in 2024-25—the new budget aims to discontinue selected exemptions from VAT and excise duties, such as those for construction, real estate, and electric vehicles. The budget also lowers tax payment thresholds and raises new taxes. The implementation and sequencing of these reforms would need to limit any potential adverse impact on economic growth, while also protecting the most vulnerable. Reforming pensions On the expenditure side, there is room to make pension spending more sustainable. Benefits paid to individuals through the Basic Retirement Pension program (BRP)—received by all Mauritians aged 60 and older—have more than doubled since 2019. On top of higher benefits, fiscal pressures are mounting from a relative increase in the number of pensioners. As society ages, Mauritius is expected to face a doubling in the old-age dependency ratio over the next thirty years, resulting in a fast-growing pension bill. Maintaining the present system would imply significant intergenerational redistribution from younger to older generations, as the (relatively small) younger cohort would likely face higher taxes to finance pensions for the (larger) older one. An option to help contain the growing cost of the BRP is a gradual alignment of the eligibility age from 60 to the official retirement age of 65. Given demographic trends, the alignment in the BRP eligibility age would help make the pension system more sustainable, while containing intergenerational inequalities and protecting the most vulnerable. The announced budget is a step in this direction. Spending efficiently There is also scope for streamlining broadly targeted and regressive fiscal transfers. Social subsidies in Mauritius, in many cases, reach relatively few poor individuals. For example, only 11 percent of beneficiaries of the social aid program are defined as poor. The announced budget proposes savings by gradually unwinding some broadly targeted subsidies. The resulting savings will help create fiscal space to finance targeted schemes for the most vulnerable, while making fiscal policy more sustainable. Unlike the dodo, now extinct, Mauritius' economy will continue to thrive so long as fiscal sustainability is secured. Distributed by APO Group on behalf of International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Forbes
06-07-2025
- Science
- Forbes
A Biologist Spotlights The Smallest Flightless Bird, Found On Earth's Only ‘Inaccessible' Island
Flightless birds like the ostrich or emu tend to be larger than their flight-capable cousins. But ... More that's not always the case. Here's the story of the world's smallest flightless bird, found on one of the most remote island archipelagos on the planet. Flightless birds have had a tough go of it in recent times, with humans to blame. We all know the story of the dodo of Mauritius, a flightless bird that was famously hunted out of existence by human settlers in a span of decades. And there are other examples. The great auk of the North Atlantic, the moa of New Zealand, the elephant bird of Madagascar, and the Réunion ibis of Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean all perished shortly after the humans entered the picture. A 2020 study published in Science Advance reveals just how bleak the picture has been for flightless birds. Taking inventory of all recorded bird extinctions, the scientists estimate that 581 birds have gone extinct in recent times, of which 166 were flightless. In other words, 29% of bird extinctions have been flightless. Compare that to the ratio of flight-capable to flightless birds, which is about 100:1, and you can quickly see how dire the situation is for this quirky animal class. Of course, not all flightless birds have gone extinct. The ostrich, the emu, the penguin, the weka and many other flightless bird species still boast healthy numbers. The smallest flightless bird in existence today, which also boasts relatively healthy numbers despite its limited geographic range, is the Inaccessible Island rail. Here's its story. The World's Smallest Flightless Bird: The Inaccessible Island Rail The Inaccessible Island rail is the world's smallest flightless bird, found only on a remote ... More volcanic island in the South Atlantic. Weighing less than a tenth of a pound (about as much as a golf ball) and measuring around five to six inches in length, the Inaccessible Island rail (Laterallus rogersi) holds the distinction of being the smallest flightless bird in the world. It lives exclusively on Inaccessible Island, a volcanic outcrop in the South Atlantic Ocean that forms part of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, one of the most remote island chains on Earth. Inaccessible Island is aptly named. It's surrounded by treacherous seas and steep, craggy cliffs, which have mostly protected it from human intrusion. This isolation has allowed the island's wildlife, including the rail, to evolve largely without predators and human interference. The island itself is only about five and a half square miles in size, yet it supports a surprisingly diverse array of life, due to its mix of rugged terrain, grasslands and vegetation. The Inaccessible Island rail spends much of its time hidden among dense tussock grass and ferns, moving through underbrush in search of insects, seeds and small invertebrates. Although it can't fly, the rail is a nimble and fast runner, which helps it evade predators like seabirds. Inaccessible Island, with its steep cliffs and rough seas, has remained largely untouched by ... More humans—safeguarding its unique wildlife. Its ancestors are believed to have been flying rails that somehow reached the island — likely blown off course during a storm. Once there, with no predators and no need to fly, the birds gradually lost their ability to fly. Over time, they shrank in size and evolved into the compact, flightless form we see today. Despite its limited range and specialized habitat, the Inaccessible Island rail is currently listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, with a stable population trend. That's due in large part to the uninhabited status of the island, strict conservation protections and the absence of invasive species like rats or cats that have decimated bird populations on other islands. However, scientists remain vigilant. Because the entire global population is confined to a single island, estimated at 5,000 to 10,000 individuals, the rail could face sudden extinction if climate change or an invasive predator became an issue. Other Small Flightless Birds Of The World While the Inaccessible Island rail is the smallest, it's not the only small flightless bird that has carved out a niche in the modern world. Several other species of flightless birds, though often overshadowed by their larger, more famous cousins, continue to thrive in isolated environments across the globe, each with their own story. Take the flightless cormorant (Phalacrocorax harrisi), for example, which is found only on the Galápagos Islands. It is a striking bird with stubby wings and a powerful body adapted for swimming rather than flying. Unlike its flying relatives, it uses its wings more like rudders while diving beneath the waves. These birds have evolved into underwater hunters, preying on fish and eels along the rocky shores of Fernandina and Isabela Islands. With a population of around 1,400 individuals, the flightless cormorant is currently listed as vulnerable, but ongoing conservation efforts have helped stabilize its numbers. The Tasmanian native-hen is a fast-running, flightless bird often seen darting through grasslands ... More and wetlands across Tasmania. Another small non-flyer is the Tasmanian native-hen (Tribonyx mortierii), which is about the size of a small chicken and found only in Tasmania. Though it cannot fly, it makes up for it with incredible running speed: some individuals have been clocked at up to 31 miles per hour. The Tasmanian native-hen bird thrives in open grasslands and near water sources, often seen in groups. Unlike other island-endemic flightless birds, the native-hen has a robust population and is not currently threatened, thanks in part to Tasmania's relatively predator-free environment. New Zealand is another hotspot for small flightless birds. The weka (Gallirallus australis), a scrappy, curious rail native to the country, is about the size of a chicken. Often spotted scavenging food or rummaging through campsites, weka are adaptable and intelligent, traits that have helped some regional populations thrive. However, habitat loss and predators have led to declines in certain areas, prompting ongoing conservation efforts. Are you an animal lover who owns a pet, perhaps even a pet bird? Take the science-backed Pet Personality Test to know how well you know your little friend.
Forbes
01-06-2025
- General
- Forbes
A Biologist Spotlights The World's Most Aggressive Bird. Hint: It's Flightless, It's Not The Ostrich, And It's Been Known To Kill People
In the case of flightless birds, the biggest isn't always the most terrifying. It is the ... More third-biggest flightless bird that you really need to be wary of. When we think of flightless birds, aggressive is probably not the word that comes to mind. We might think of a peacock calmly roaming the perimeter of a zoo (peacocks, however, aren't true flightless birds – they are capable of flying for short distances). We might think of the unfortunate dodo of Mauritius. This was a bird so docile and unafraid of environmental threats it was hunted out of existence in less than 100 years. Or, we might think of the ostrich. The ostrich, the world's biggest flightless bird, does pose some threat to humans. There are documented cases of people being kicked by the ostrich's powerful legs, resulting in serious injuries. But the bird we really need to be careful around – assuming you live in northern Australia or the New Guinea region – is the cassowary. Here's its story and why it can be so dangerous to humans. A southern cassowary strides through the dense rainforest of Queensland, Australia. The cassowary is a bird that looks like it stepped out of the Cretaceous period. Standing up to six feet tall and weighing as much as 130 pounds, it is undoubtedly an imposing figure. Its glossy black feathers resemble a coarse cloak. On top of its head rests a helmet-like casque – a keratin structure whose exact function remains debated. Some biologists suggest it helps with navigating dense forest or amplifies the cassowary's deep, rumbling calls. Cassowaries are notoriously territorial, especially the females, who are larger and more aggressive than the males. They defend their domain fiercely and are not afraid to charge when they feel threatened. The real danger lies in their legs. Each foot has three toes, the inner one armed with a dagger-like claw up to five inches long. These claws aren't just for show, they are powerful weapons, capable of inflicting deep gashes or even fatal injuries. There are numerous documented cases of cassowaries attacking humans. The most infamous incident occurred in 1926, when a 16-year-old boy was reportedly killed by a cassowary after attempting to club it. While fatal encounters are exceedingly rare, serious injuries are not. In Australia, wildlife officers have had to develop protocols for safely managing these birds, particularly in areas where humans and cassowaries frequently cross paths. (Sidebar: While few birds rival the cassowary's power on land, one rules the skies. Meet the world's strongest flying bird – it can, and does, attack humans too.) It's not just aggression that makes cassowaries stand out. It also their speed and agility. These birds can sprint up to 30 miles per hour and leap five feet into the air. They can swim well too, making them even more formidable in their dense rainforest habitat. Cassowaries are highly territorial birds and will fiercely defend their range from intruders. Why are they so aggressive? One theory points to their solitary nature and high parental investment. Female cassowaries lay eggs, but it's the male who incubates them and raises the chicks alone. This solitary, protective behavior can translate into aggression when the bird feels cornered or surprised. In areas where cassowaries come into contact with humans – like trails, suburban edges or tourist sites – conflict can escalate quickly. Conservationists stress that cassowaries are not villains. Their aggression is a natural defense mechanism. Furthermore, these birds play a critical role in their ecosystems by dispersing seeds of the plants they consume. Without cassowaries, some plant species might struggle to survive. Respect, not fear, is the key. Keeping a safe distance and avoiding feeding or provoking them helps ensure peaceful coexistence. Are you an animal lover who owns a pet? Take the science-backed Pet Personality Test to know how well you know your little friend.
