Perhaps I’ve been stuck in my own bubble for too long, but I’ve only just discovered that a cassowary exists and I have multiple questions.
- What are you?
- Are you a dinosaur?
- What were dinosaurs like?
- Who were the loser dinosaurs no one talked to?
- The T-Rex was the loser dinosaur wasn’t it? That’s why it was always angry?
- Is The Land Before Time an accurate depiction of dinosaurs?
- Oh my god, how sad was it when the Mum died? I cried so hard when I was a kid and last week about an unrelated matter.
- Did you cry last week, cassowary?
- What do you miss about the old days before the meteor snafu?
For those as painfully clueless as I clearly am, here’s what a cassowary looks like.
I wasn’t wrong for mistaking this birdyboi for a dinosaur, it looks positively Jurassic.
Now, give me a second while I go and google exactly what a cassowary is, and where you can find it.
I’m back.
Gather around, I have all the answers you need.
What are you?
According to my extensive research (donate to Wikipedia if you can), it turns out a cassowary is a bird.
Pause for dramatic effect.
The female cassowaries are bigger than the male ones and more colourful, too. They basically have their cassowary babies and then make the male cassowary do all the work raising them, which is a solid parenting system if I ever did see one.
They only have three toes, which sounds like a dream because I personally hate my pinky toe. What’s the point of you, pinky toe? Balance? I don’t think so, I’m unstable as hell.
Interestingly, it’s the third-largest bird behind the well-known emu and ostrich. Why do they get all the glitz, glamour and attention? Justice for cassowaries.
Also, I couldn’t find any information to back up my dinosaur claims so if anyone asks, I never made them.
Last fun fact: although they’re the third-largest living bird, they’re actually the second-heaviest. Thiccbois.
Where are you?
The most common cassowary, the southern cassowary, can be found – plot twist – right here in Australia. That’s us. We have cassowaries and we just don’t talk about it.
Before you Pertheners get excited and run outside to try and find a cassowary rummaging through your garage looking for the car keys, they only live in Tropical North Queensland because (now this is just my opinion), it’s warmer year-round than the rest of Australia and no cassowary would be caught dead down the bottom of Australia, shivering in a scarf and ordering a flat white.
Other potential reasons I reckon they hang out in Tropical North Queensland:
- People are just more relaxed in general because they’re all hot and tanned and don’t have to worry about their skin tone clashing with a red t-shirt.
- They can go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef whenever they darn please. Where I live, the only place I can go scuba diving is out back in the water tank. 4/10 don’t recommend.
- You could go your entire life and still not see everything in Tropical North Queensland, so I suspect that generations of cassowaries are currently trying to tick off their bucket list. Good luck, you guys.
- There’s fresh fruit farther than the eye can see. And, as I’ve just learnt, that’s exactly what cassowaries eat, so that checks out. Imagine being able to eat fruit 24/7 without getting diabetes.
Can you fly?
No. Perhaps in spirit or when they have one of those dreams where you’re flying and then you jolt upright and think you’re falling through the sky and panic for .02 seconds.
Wait a second. If cassowaries can’t fly, and humans can’t fly, does that mean that we’re all just cassowaries deep down? I’m not equipped for this level of spiralling.
How old are you?
I swear to Nicole Kidman, I couldn’t find out this information for the life of me.
Perhaps they really are from the Jurassic period after all? Perhaps they only started existing a few days ago? I need answers.
There actually happens to be a place called the Cassowary Coast where you can look at them yourself, so my plan is to fly up there, find one in the wild and shout some questions at it from a safe distance.
Can I feed you?
Absolutely not. You really shouldn’t even get close to them.
They have personal space issues which is so fair. Very COVID-safe of you, cassowaries.
Respect.
