CASSOWARIES 
The cassowary is one of the flightless birds inhabiting forests. Though it is 
extremely wary and usually most active after dusk, its presence is easily 
detected by its harsh guttural note, which can be heard several miles away. 
Cassowaries are able to leap and bound with great speed through the 
thickest jungle. In this they are aided by a tall smooth helmet of horn, 
which protects their heads and shoves aside impeding shrubs and vines. 
The common cassowary’s body is covered with dark brown feathers 
of wiry appearance; its featherless head is blue. To its neck are attached 
six or eight bell-like balls of bright blue or scarlet. These ornaments and 
its shiny black helmet make it the most colorful bird of the flightless group. 
It lacks tail feathers. 
The cassowary will eat berries, figs, whole oranges, grasshoppers, 
cockroaches, spiders, caterpillars, and will swallow pebbles. In confinement 
it is fed bread, plantains and sweet potatoes and is as promiscuously vora¬ 
cious as the ostrich. A popular book shows a photograph of a wooden spool,, 
a doll, a rubber ball, a powder compact and an assortment of bottle caps 
removed from the stomach of one former resident of the New York Zoo¬ 
logical Park. However this jungle bird’s sole enemy, other than itself, is 
man who hunts it for its delicious flesh and also for its skin, of which the 
ranchers make hearth rugs and door mats. 
Cassowaries are extremely powerful, and the sharp nail of their inner 
toe is a dangerous weapon. With one forward or sideward kick the mighty 
bird can easily knock a man down. 
Cassowaries pair off and usually roam in a group of four or five 
couples. They mate during August and September. The eggs, measuring 
from three to six inches in length, are laid in beds of green moss in the 
depths of the jungle. They are rendered practically invisible by their ex¬ 
quisite emerald color. The incubation period lasts for two months. The 
chicks are a dull rusty brown. When they are a few months old, the birds 
gather in flocks of several families for mutual defense and protection of 
the chicks. 
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