Southern Cassowary
Casuarius casuarius

Male Cassowary and his chick.

Standing 1.5 to 2.0 m high the Cassowary is by far the most impressive creature in the Wet Tropics of Australia. 

Like its distant relative the Emu, the male Cassowary has the responsibility of raising the family. The female who is larger than the male, usually lays him a clutch of four eggs and then departs leaving him to incubate the eggs and raise the chicks entirely on his own. She will often find another male and lay him a clutch as well. The chicks usually stay with the male for about nine months. 

Cassowaries are omnivores but feed mainly on fruit. They are major seed disperses in the rainforest eating something like a known one hundred and fifty different fruits. They are apparently the sole remaining distributors of the seeds of about seventy species of trees in our rainforest.

Due mainly to the loss, or fragmentation of habitat the Cassowary is now an endangered species.

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Photographed at Thylogale
by David & Diane Armbrust