Cassowarys

Photo by Rob Lapaer of Rainforest Hideaway B&B, Cape Tribulation, N.Qld.

Australia's most spectacular bird would have to be the cassowary, up to two metres tall, covered in coarse black double stranded feathers, and with brilliant colors of red and blue on its neck and head. This elusive flightless bird is highly endangered and lives only in the Wet Tropics area of North Queensland, another patch of remote rainforest high up on the Cape York peninsula, and New Guinea.
The cassowary (Casuarius casuarius johnsonii) has been wandering around this planet since before the super continent Gondwana broke up in to several continents, and they have relatives in several distant continents. They belong to a family of birds called ratites and are related to the Emu, the Ostrich, the Kiwi (though there is a dramatic difference in size) and the South American Rhea - a little known bird that resembles a small emu and runs around plains in Patagonia. They are also related to the now extinct Moas of New Zealand and the Elephant Bird of Madagascar. In New Guinea there are two other species of cassowary too but in Australia the only species is the Southern Cassowary.

Photo by Rob Lapaer of Rainforest Hideaway B&B, Cape Tribulation, N.Qld.
Cassowary paying a visit to Rainforest Hideaway (click to enlarge).

Cassowaries (genus Casuarius) are frugivorous; fallen fruit and fruit on low branches is the mainstay of their diet. They also eat fungi, insects, frogs, spiders, snakes and other small animals, even dead ones and roadkills. They live for about 40-50 years. They are the second-largest bird in Australia and the third-largest remaining bird in the world (the ostrich and emu are larger).
The name cassowary is of Papuan origin, from "kasu" - horned and "weri' - head

The birds grow to 1.5 - 1.8 m tall, though the females are larger and can reach 2 m and they weigh about 60 kilograms, but the heaviest recorded was 83kg. They have a bony casque on the head that is used to batter through underbrush, this is made of keratin, the same material as our nails and hair. The casque is also used for headbutting and some people believe it is used to receive the very low frequency humming noise that they can make.

Charlie and his chicks, regular visitors at Liculala Lodge in Mission Beach

This cassowary and his chicks walk straight through the house at Daintree Drifters

Usually cassowaries are very shy but when they feel threatened or want to protect their young they can lash out dangerously with their powerful legs and jump and kick with both legs at once. Their three-toed feet have sharp claws; the dagger-like middle claw is 12 cm long.

Photo by Craig Campbell
Even this young cassowary has formidable claws

Cassowaries are very capable of killing dogs by disemboweling them and have injured people, though only one death has been recorded, more on this on the cassowary attacks page. They can run up to 50 km/h and jump up to 1.5 m. They are also good swimmers and have been observed swimming across the channel from Cardwell to Hinchinbrook Island.

Cassowary attacking
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They don't have much of a family life, they are solitary birds but females will cruise around the forest mating with several males during the breeding season from May to November. Courtship is initiated by the male when a female enters his territory. The smaller sized male must approach the larger female with caution because if she is not in the mood she is capable of seriously injuring him. The male begins courtship by circling around the female and making a low rumbling sound.

Two mating cassowaries at Cooper Creek Wilderness
Photo by Rosemary and Brian Mulcahy

When she has laid her eggs, three to eight, measuring about 90 by 140 mm and pale green-blue in color, in a shallow scrape in the ground in which the male has placed leaves and grass, she moves on again to repeat the process with another male. It is the male's duty to incubate the eggs for about fifty days and also to care for the chicks for another year or so. The chicks are striped until they are about 6-9 months old and become a glossy black colour when they are about 3 years old. By that time, the skin on the neck and head begins to turn color, and the casque begins to develop. Cassowaries are capable of breeding when they are three years old.

Photos courtesy of Mission Beach Sanctuary

Cassowaries are crucial to the survival of the rainforest, as many of the seeds are too big to be dispersed by any other birds. The cassowary eats about 150 different ones. Cassowaries swallow fruit whole and then excrete intact fruit seeds in large piles of dung which acts as a ready-made fertiliser, the dung helps the seed to grow. White-tailed rats, bush rats, melomys and musky rat-kangaroos sometimes feast on seeds in cassowary droppings. But most seeds survive to germinate. Usually, seeds are deposited within a kilometre of where they were eaten.

Cassowary droppings.
Photo by Cooper Creek Wilderness

Aborigines used to hunt and eat cassowaries. The hunters used a short pipe like a mini digeridoo and by hitting their hand on one hand of the pipe they made a sound that attracted or confused the cassowaries, the birds were also easy to find as they usually have a routine and walk the same route everyday.
The meat of the cassowary is said to be very strong in taste and to even make some people a bit dizzy the first time they eat it. Cassowaries are still part of the diet in New Guinea, where they are either hunted or kept as domestic animals, though this is risky as the birds can escape and if it injures or kills anyone in the village family members will expect compensation or a revenge killing.

Photo by Craig Campbell
Cassowary being cooked in New Guinea village

The total population of cassowaries in Australia is estimated to be around the 1500, they are endangered and declared a protected species. The main problems for them are;

- loss of habitat through clearing for residential settlement and agricultural expansion (nowadays everyone thinks the rainforest starts at the DaIntree river, it used to start hundreds of kilometres further south before the introduction of sugarcane)
- fragmentation of habitat ( from roads, farms and subdivisions)
- vehicle traffic (road kills are the number one cause of adult cassowary deaths, especially around the Mission Beach area),
- dogs (which are especially aggressive to chicks and juveniles)
- feral pigs - they compete for food with cassowaries and chew the seeds so they will not be dispersed and germinated like when they pass through a cassowary
- Some birds are still being shot and eaten up Cape York

Photo by Rob Lapaer of Rainforest Hideaway B&B, Cape Tribulation, N.Qld.
This 'before and after' bit of artwork is situated along the road to Cape Tribulation.

It’s best not to stop if you see a Cassowary on the road, but to slow down instead. This is to prevent encouragement of the bird’s interest in cars and to reduce its risk of being hit or causing an accident.

Do not feed a Cassowary as this reinforces its interest in people and contributes to its fearless attitude.

Cassowary at Rainforest Hideaway B&B in Cape Tribulation

Cassowary and chicks on the main road up to Cape Tribulation

When driving near a Cassowary, move away quickly so the bird will become disinterested.

Southern Cassowary (Casuarius Casuarius)., Daintree NP, Queensland, Australia
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we saw this infomation at http://www.amazingaustralia.com.au/animals/cassowary.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjUTmjLg6YQ

Cassowarys

We are two 8 and 9 year old boys that love cassowarys.

The cassowary of the rainforest of Northern Queensland is in a lot of trouble and more than half the Australian population do not even know that such a bird exists.

The Australian cassowary, the second largest bird in the world, is a very beautiful and a very important bird that lives in our northern rainforest. Some biologists claim that without the cassowary at least 200 species of trees and plants could not grow naturally in the rainforest.

The cassowary walks around the forest floor and picks up the fallen fruit, that fruit is an important part of the cassowary’s diet. After the seed has passed through the cassowary the seed can then germinate.

There are many types of plants, fungi, insects, reptiles, birds and mammals that can only exist because of those trees and plants. So, the cassowary is a very important ‘keystone species’. It is not the only keystone species in the rainforest, but there is a whole chain of events that may only happen in the rainforest because of the cassowary.

When Captain Cook arrived in North Queensland he released the first pigs into Australia. Like all the other ferals: - the cats, foxes, cane toads and the clear-fell woodchip companies etc; the pigs have become a scourge to the nature of Australia. Wild pigs are now in their thousands. In the rainforest they eat the fallen fruit that should be the food of the cassowary. The pigs destroy the seed so they then cannot grow and the cassowaries are starving in their own forest.

The cassowaries have to travel to the edge of the forest in search of food. Often domestic dogs will then chase them. Some people report seeing cassowaries being run to their death or run into the sea and drowned by domestic dogs.

Because cassowaries are starving they get used to people giving them food, they may then chase people and in rare cases kick them and so get a bad name. But, like the dingoes on Fraser Island, they are starving and it’s not their fault; it is ours. We have caused the problem so we must fix it.

The most optimistic figures for the cassowary is just over a thousand left in the wild. Even if the number were 2000 it would still be a national disgrace. The numbers are now falling rapidly. Many birds are too old to breed and the young cassowaries find it hard to survive the pigs and dogs. Every year cassowaries are hit by cars and there are still some so-called sportsmen who shoot cassowaries.

Did you know that we the Australian public could breed cassowaries at no cost to the government and get the numbers back to at least to a safe level? So that, when we rid the land of pigs we would have some cassowaries with which to restock the rainforest. Strangely though, we are not allowed to breed the cassowaries back to safe numbers because cassowaries are rare.

It appears that Germany would buy every wild pig that we could catch. I say catch, because you cannot shoot the pigs, they are too smart; as soon as you shoot one the rest will disappear. However because they are smart you can trick them into traps. An industry is out there just waiting to happen.

We found this information at www.snakeshow.net