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17 images Created 8 Jul 2021

Jungle Royalty: the enigmatic cassowary

There’s still much to discover about Australia's enigmatic rainforest-dwelling cassowary. The world’s second-heaviest bird remains shrouded in mystery. Living in the shadowy world of northern Queensland’s ancient rainforests, the southern cassowary still sometimes surprises scientists and wildlife carers with unusual and rarely documented behaviours. One of the most significant conservation challenges facd by the southern cassowary include habitat loss and fragmentation, the birds are also killed in significant numbers by vehicle strikes and dog attacks.
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  • Shrouded in mystery and foliage, the featherless neck of the southern cassowary is brightly coloured in blues, reds and purples, which are more vivid in females. The two loose skin flaps that hang down from neck are know as wattles, the function of which remains unknown, one of the many secrets of this species.
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  • Cassowaries live in tropical rainforests, paperbark swamps, mangrove forests woodlands and even forage along beaches where the rainforest meets the sea. They require a diverse range of habitats to ensure availability of fleshy fruits year round.
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  • Cassowaries breed when fruit is most abundant – from June to October.. The female cassowary lays three to five large green eggs in a simple nest scraped in the ground. The male then incubates the clutch for 50 days, raises and protects the chicks for about a year, and then chases them away. Cassowaries can live to 40 years in the wild.
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  • Many species rely on cassowaries for seed dispersal and germination. For this reason they're known as a 'keystone' species. They've also been called a rainforest gardener, swallowing fruit whole and spreading the seeds great distances.
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  • Cassowaries are frugivores (fruit eaters), and are known to eat the fruits from 238 plant species. They also occasionally eat small vertebrates, invertebrates, fungi and carrion (dead animals).
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  • Cassowaries teach their young from an early age how to forage for the fruits of Queensland’s tropical rainforest.
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  • Cassowary plumbs locally fgrown at the Community for Cassowary Conservation (C4) nursery.
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  • Peter Rowles, President, Community for Coastal Cassowary Conservation Inc (C4) photographed near Mission Beach, with a cassowary that was used to attract the public to the C4 World Heritage Centre until it was taken down by a territorial male cassowary.
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  • World Heritage Visitor Centre - Community for Coastal and Cassowary Conservation Inc near Mission Beach, Queensland, Australia. The C4 Display Centre has plenty to offer for visitors to Mission Beach including further information about the projects to purchase land to connect cassowary habitat.
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  • A juvenile cassorary under care of the Garners Beach Cassowary Rehabilitation Centre, a significant benefit of the C4 Community for Coastal and Cassowary Conservation.
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  • Ingrid Marker is a southern cassowary conservationist that has witnessed several dog attacks on cassowaries on her property near Mission Beach. The images on her laptop shows a cassowary killed by dogs on her property.
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  • Crops including bannana plantations threaten cassowary rainforest habitat, whilst roads make borders that cassowary’s must cross to access feeding areas, increasing the likelihood of car strikes.
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  • Southern cassowaries are still thretened by road incidents. After cyclones cassowaries venture closer to human settlements, and this makes them more vulnerable to existing threats, especially dog attacks and collisions with vehicles.
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  • Habitat destruction and fragmentation are the main causes of the cassowary's dramatic decline. Land clearing for farming and urban development have greatly reduced their habitat forcing cassowaries into urban areas.
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  • Southern cassowaries have become a major tourist attraction aling the edges of their remaining habitat near urban areas in tropical Queensland. When they stray into public areas, they often attract the attention of curious onlookers.
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  • The area around Mission Beach is home to one of the highest concentrations of the cassowary in Australia. They have become a tourist attraction at some towns where they can be spotted walking through fields and gardens and along roads.
    Cassowary_16.jpg
  • Although they have a fearsome reputation, southern cassowaries are a generally shy, peaceable, and harmless rainforest inhabitant. Flanked by lush rainforest on one side and the Great Barrier Reef on the other, a juvenile cassowary make a fleeting appearance in the heart of cassowary country with an approaching summer storm.
    Cassowary_17.jpg