Episode 222: Two Dangerous Birds of New Guinea
b"This week let's learn about a couple of dangerous birds of New Guinea! They're not what you might think.\\n\\nJoin our mailing list!\\n\\nFurther Reading/Watching:\\n\\nHow Dangerous Are Cassowaries, Really?\\n\\nInside the Cassowary's Casque\\n\\nBreakfast Club Ep. 34: Jack Dumbacher on Poisonous Birds (a long video but a really great deep dive into the pitohui)\\n\\nThe mighty cassowary with a mighty casque on its head, looking like a modern dinosaur, which it is:\\n\\n\\n\\nA cassowary and babies:\\n\\n\\n\\nA hooded pitohui, looking surprised to learn it's toxic:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\n\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\n\\nIt\\u2019s time to revisit New Guinea and its weird and amazing birds! This week we\\u2019re going to look at two dangerous birds of New Guinea. Thanks again to M Is for Awesome for the suggestion.\\n\\nLots of birds are pretty or cute, and that\\u2019s great. But some birds\\u2026are dangerous. For instance, the cassowary. There are three species alive today, all of which live in New Guinea along with some other nearby islands. The southern cassowary lives in northeastern Australia too.\\n\\nIt\\u2019s a big, shy, flightless bird that lives deep in the rainforest. The biggest species is the southern cassowary, which can grow up to six and a half feet tall, or 2 meters. Its wings are small but it can run extremely fast, up to 30 mph, or 50 km/h. It can also jump and even swim extremely well. This is surprising not just because it\\u2019s such a big bird but because it looks ungainly. It\\u2019s shaped sort of like its relation, the emu, although its neck is shorter, with a big chunky body, long strong legs, and a little head in comparison. Females are larger than males on average with more brightly colored necks.\\n\\nThe cassowary\\u2019s body is covered with black feathers while the legs are bare, as is the neck and head. The neck is bright blue in females, paler blue in males, with red wattles that hang down as decoration. The face is a lighter blue with a black bill. It has spine-like feathers that grow from its small wings, which appear to be for decoration too, or at least the cassowary doesn\\u2019t seem to use those spiny feathers for anything. But the most unusual thing about the cassowary is the casque on its head.\\n\\nThe casque is a sort of plate that grows on the top of the bird\\u2019s head. Different species of cassowary have different shaped casques, and there\\u2019s some variation in size and shape of casques from individual to individual. The dwarf cassowary is the smallest, naturally, and has a relatively low casque. The northern cassowary has a larger, taller casque and the southern cassowary has the largest, tallest casque, shaped sort of like your hand if you keep it flat with all your fingers together, only instead of flat it\\u2019s sticking up from the top of the bird\\u2019s head. Looking at a cassowary is like looking at a dinosaur with a beak.\\n\\nThe casque consists of a bony core made up of two layers around an open space, and it\\u2019s covered with a keratin sheath. This is similar in structure to the kind of horns many hoofed animals have, like cattle and sheep, but there are plenty of differences. The sheath isn\\u2019t as hard as the keratin sheath on a mammal\\u2019s horn, for one thing. It\\u2019s actually a little bit leathery. It also contains a pocket inside the skull beneath the casque that\\u2019s full of delicate tissue made up mostly of tiny blood vessels.\\n\\nNo one except the cassowary knows for sure what the casque is for. Over the years, researchers have suggested it might be used as a weapon, it might act as a shield to keep falling fruit from injuring its head when it\\u2019s under a fruit tree, it might knock the casque against a tree to make fruit fall, it might use it to dig with, it might use the empty space inside as a resonant chamber to make noise with, or it might use the empty space inside to help it hear faint sounds.\\n\\nMost likely, the casque is primarily for display. Since the cassowary does communicate with low-frequency booming sounds to attract ..."