Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm flightless Josh.
Speaker 1: There's flightless Chuck. Flightless. Jerry's with us and we're speaking
Speaker 1: about the cassowary, a type of bird that is you
Speaker 1: guessed it, flight less. There's no less flight in a
Speaker 1: bird than the cassowary. I am a right, flightless and dangerous,
Speaker 1: the most dangerous bird in the world. So where does
Speaker 1: it live? Of course Australia, that's right, uh in this sucker.
Speaker 1: If you want to look up a picture, if you're
Speaker 1: not driving or something, you should check it out. They
Speaker 1: are sort of known as one of the closest um
Speaker 1: relatives to dinosaurs bird wise that we have, specifically the velociraptor. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love Jurassic Park, Chuck, how do you too? So um,
Speaker 1: you know what's funny is I hadn't actually looked up
Speaker 1: a picture of the cassowary until you said you should
Speaker 1: look it up. I was like, oh, yeah, I've still
Speaker 1: never seen one of these. Now I see it, I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: I've seen this, but they're amazing videos. They look like
Speaker 1: a cross not across, but you're you can tell they're
Speaker 1: definitely akin to EMUs ostriches um and they're huge. They're
Speaker 1: really big. There there's there's three types and the one
Speaker 1: of the types, I think this the southern is the
Speaker 1: second biggest bird in the world, next to the ostrich
Speaker 1: or heaviest. I should say at least yes, they are
Speaker 1: super big and super dangerous. They they're listed as a
Speaker 1: Class two animal in Florida, along with alligators and cats.
Speaker 1: If you're asking why would they be in Florida if
Speaker 1: they're native to Southeast Asian Australia, is because people can
Speaker 1: if they jump through hoops, keep them as pets. But
Speaker 1: they can kill you, which is what happened to a
Speaker 1: seventy five year old man in Florida, in Florida whose
Speaker 1: pet Cassowary killed him dead. And all this chuck, by
Speaker 1: the way, is a demoustration of how why those in
Speaker 1: the no call Florida Western Australia. Is that true? No?
Speaker 1: But it it really it does line up. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that wants to kill you in Florida too,
Speaker 1: all right, and a lot of people who like to
Speaker 1: keep that stuff that wants to kill you as pets
Speaker 1: both places. And that's a bad combo. And I believe
Speaker 1: crocodile Dundee were retired to Naples, Florida in the last
Speaker 1: one coming together. I'm kidding, Okay, it would have been
Speaker 1: pretty awesome though. Uh. Back to the castoary though. It
Speaker 1: has these sort of bristly feathers that look like hair.
Speaker 1: If you see a video of them, if you're kind
Speaker 1: of from a distance, it looks like kind of a
Speaker 1: hairy thing. They have this blue face, a couple of
Speaker 1: red wattles on the neck, and then this big cask
Speaker 1: helmet on top of its head made of keratin that's
Speaker 1: really like a literal helmet. Yeah, that's probably what makes
Speaker 1: them seem the most dinosaurs are like, although they got
Speaker 1: a lot of dinosaurs features that that helmet, like the
Speaker 1: hard helmet. It's made of the same stuff like you said, Karen,
Speaker 1: and that's what their beaks made of two and same
Speaker 1: with their feathers too, but it's really tough structural skin. Um.
Speaker 1: I think there's dinosaurs that had that same exact thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like a a fin of a tri serratops. Yes,
Speaker 1: just one of them, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: just the sarahtops right Well no, no, no, not the horns.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the on the back. Are you okay?
Speaker 1: I've been better? All right? Uh. The thing that's so
Speaker 1: deadly about the castowary though, is not you're not gonna
Speaker 1: get headbutted by that cask. Is you're gonna get clawed
Speaker 1: by a three to five inch This is where the
Speaker 1: velociraptor thing comes in, this three to five inch claw
Speaker 1: that is super sharp. And all you have to do
Speaker 1: is look at a video of the guy on YouTube
Speaker 1: with a basically a big shield in this cassowary coming
Speaker 1: at him and jumping and kicking both of his legs
Speaker 1: with these clawset this guy and literally knocking us grown
Speaker 1: man backwards. To know how scary this thing can be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, um, I mean they're like, it's there. Those
Speaker 1: claws are super sharp, but their legs are also super
Speaker 1: powerful too, so they pack a really big punch that's
Speaker 1: also a really sharp punch that's been known to basically
Speaker 1: gut people like not only can it like make you
Speaker 1: bleed pretty bad, it can reach your internal organs sometimes too.
Speaker 1: And the reason they're flightless is even though they're big,
Speaker 1: their little wings only extend fully extent about a foot
Speaker 1: from their potty, so they have no chance of flying
Speaker 1: they don't. One of the other things too, by their feathers.
Speaker 1: You said, it looks like hair. It's really good to
Speaker 1: protect them because they live in the forests with a
Speaker 1: lot of dense underbrush, a lot of thorns, a lot
Speaker 1: of branches and stuff. And one of the the rees
Speaker 1: behind why they think they have that horn on their head.
Speaker 1: What's it call again? I want to say cask. The
Speaker 1: reason that one of the reasons they think they have
Speaker 1: the cask is um so that it can kind of
Speaker 1: run headlong through the forest without hurting its head. But
Speaker 1: then also, um, those those thick, heavy feathers also protect
Speaker 1: the body too from getting stabbed by thorns and things
Speaker 1: like that. That's right, so let's should we take a break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's all right. We'll talk more about the deadly cast
Speaker 1: a wary right after this. Okay, chuck um, So we're
Speaker 1: talking about the deadly cast a wary, which I mean,
Speaker 1: it is deadly, but I don't I don't think it's
Speaker 1: any more deadly. It's much less deadly even um or,
Speaker 1: you're much less likely to die by a castawary than
Speaker 1: you are from saying like getting infection from a dog
Speaker 1: bite or something like that. Right. Statistically speaking, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we we shouldn't disparage the castawary is deadly, like
Speaker 1: they can kill and they have those sharp claws, but
Speaker 1: they're not aggressive generally. They're not after you. Generally, if
Speaker 1: you come upon them while they're while they have laid
Speaker 1: their eggs or something, you may be in trouble, but
Speaker 1: they generally want to stay away from people. Um. There
Speaker 1: is another video that's pretty a little frightening. If they
Speaker 1: would have put like scary music to it, it it would
Speaker 1: have helped. But there was a woman on the beach
Speaker 1: in Australia, I guess, and she filmed the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But this castawary was just walking toward her and she's
Speaker 1: walking backwards and it keeps coming and it's pecking at
Speaker 1: the phone. But after having seen that other video, I'm
Speaker 1: just like on edge waiting for this thing to jump
Speaker 1: up and slice her stomach open. It's intimidating and it's
Speaker 1: a very large bird. And when it's coming at you
Speaker 1: with those kind of crazy eyes and its heads duck
Speaker 1: and back and forth and it's kind of pecking at you,
Speaker 1: it seems like a velociraptor in that moment. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can imagine. Um. So, yeah, I think it's more just
Speaker 1: like it's remarkable that a bird can kill you and
Speaker 1: has before that, than it is like actually like a
Speaker 1: super deadly bird. What's the deal with that wattle? They're
Speaker 1: not sure, but one of the theories is that it's
Speaker 1: basically like a current mood indicator, like current mood effervescent,
Speaker 1: like a mood bring. It changes color brightness with their mood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not too bad, um. Or to maybe say like
Speaker 1: I'm I'm robust and uh maybe like sexually perhaps, sure,
Speaker 1: like check on my wattle exactly. They're also known as
Speaker 1: a keystone species because what they do is they eat fruit,
Speaker 1: tons of fruit, and they walk around and cover a
Speaker 1: great area and poop that seed out. Uh. It goes
Speaker 1: right through their digestive tracks, and they deposit the seeds
Speaker 1: all over the place. So you get a much more
Speaker 1: diverse uh fruit habitat in areas where they are popular. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because yeah, I mean they're they're not only spreading the
Speaker 1: seeds around when they poop it out. It's got all
Speaker 1: sorts of nutrients to grow with, and it's just a
Speaker 1: great great um uh commence all lists set up, I guess,
Speaker 1: uh They also are pretty stealth. They have this apparently
Speaker 1: their call it's so low it's just on the edge
Speaker 1: of human hearing, so you may not even hear them
Speaker 1: coming at you. Yeah, and apparently though, like you can
Speaker 1: feel it in your chest if you happen to be
Speaker 1: near one when they call, like it rumbles in your chest.
Speaker 1: I love it. These things are great. Um. Did we
Speaker 1: ever say how big they get? Chuck? Uh? Yeah, he
Speaker 1: said six six six and or so. Yeah, that's just
Speaker 1: so enormous. But what I thought was really interesting is
Speaker 1: um and at the very least the Southern castawary species. Uh,
Speaker 1: the female is about a hundred and seventy pounds. The
Speaker 1: males are a hundred and twenty five pounds, and even
Speaker 1: more interesting, the males are the ones that actually raise
Speaker 1: the hatchlings. Did you know that? Well, I didn't until
Speaker 1: I mean, I knew nothing about this thing until I
Speaker 1: looked into it. But yeah, the female basically lazy eggs
Speaker 1: and it's like, my work here is done. It's on you, yep,
Speaker 1: raise the kids, and the males do. They raise these kids,
Speaker 1: and the female goes off in mates with more males
Speaker 1: other males, And it makes total sense from a natural
Speaker 1: selection standpoint, um, because that just means that more castawary
Speaker 1: chicks can be born, the more female cast wary can
Speaker 1: go off and and mate with more male castawaries, as
Speaker 1: long as the males are the ones raising the chicks.
Speaker 1: That's pretty great, great idea, and it's great because their
Speaker 1: numbers are dwindling. All three species are vulnerable or near threatened.
Speaker 1: Of course, humans have a lot to do with this
Speaker 1: loss of habitat because we're growing into their territory or
Speaker 1: they're getting hit by cars stuff like that. Um, dogs
Speaker 1: apparently if it's a young dog or a small dog,
Speaker 1: the cassowary, Uh, like, there are dog attacks on record,
Speaker 1: but if the dog gets bigger, they can be a
Speaker 1: threat to the cassowary. Yeah, especially young cassowaries. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: all size. It's like whoever shoop up is the one threatened.
Speaker 1: It's the law of nature, that's right. So there are
Speaker 1: people working um to keep the cassowaries around, make sure
Speaker 1: they don't go extinct. And like you said, it's typically
Speaker 1: human encroachments. So people are buying back some of their
Speaker 1: native habitats and just trying to set them off as
Speaker 1: preserves and building ways around roadways, which is another big ing.
Speaker 1: We should do a short stuff on that sometime, basically
Speaker 1: like nature highways that are overpasses in the woods, over
Speaker 1: roads that go through the woods, and this is pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and maybe maybe we just did the short stuff on
Speaker 1: it just now. I don't know if there's much more
Speaker 1: to say about it, but I just think it's amazing looking.
Speaker 1: I've seen pictures of them. They just look like grass
Speaker 1: covered overpasses, almost like what are overpasses are going to
Speaker 1: look like in when there's no more people left to
Speaker 1: look like the last of us are Station eleven. Sure
Speaker 1: you got anything else and did anything else? Well, since
Speaker 1: we've got nothing else, everybody. This owe to Cassowaries is out.
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