MURDER BIRDS! For those of you who have an unnatural fear of birds, or perhaps you watched Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds” at a much too young age and now whenever you venture outside you are cautious as you look to the skies for fear of a bird, any bird, from the mighty hawk to the tiny sparrow who could swoop down and peck out your eyes at any moment! If you are one of these people who fear birds, perhaps this is not the episode for you. As today we will be learning about two of the most dangerous birds on the planet. And the worst part is, they won’t be coming at you from the skies.
I’m Deidre, someone who worked as a zookeeper for ten years and now spend my time here on Weird Animal Facts: Explicit educating you on the weirdest of weird animals. And the two animals of today are not only weird but can be frightening. The ostrich and cassowary. And these two birds couldn’t be weirder. They are birds but they don’t fly. They are giant, dinosaur like creatures with what could be considered literal daggers on their feet! They may not come at you stealthfuly from the sky, instead they will attach you head on. They want you to know it was them!
Stop freaking out, because the chances of getting murder from one of these massive birds is not likely. Not impossible but not likely. Unless of course you go to their home country and piss them off. But you wouldn’t do that because that would make you a dick and even though many humans can be dicks, you most certainly are not if you are listening to this podcast. Therefore, you will not and physically cannot be a dick to animals. And if you break this disclosed promise then I do hope a cassowary murders you in your sleep. That’s what you get for being a dick.
There are many flightless birds in the world. Ostrich, cassowary, kiwi, emu, rhea and even penguins. We will not be talking about penguins because even though they are flightless they are no ratites as their wings do somewhat help them fly…well in the water that is.
Ratite: typically, a flightless bird with a flat breastbone.
Penguins don’t have a flat breastbone. For flighted birds and even penguins who will use that curved sternum, rely on their chest’s muscles, along the sternum to flap their wings, whether that be in the air or water. Ratites, like our ostrich, cassowary, kiwi, emu and rhea have a flat breastbone and that’s what makes them a ratite.
Scientifically speaking they would be called Struthionformes. As that is their order. (Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species). Well, not exactly. I mean that is their order but they share it with a bird, that’s not a ratite.
Fun Fact: The reason we don’t say Struthionform for all ratites is because there are other birds who are also in the order but don’t follow the guidelines to be a ratite. Such as the tinamou. The tinamou is a small bird that resembles a partridges or quail, but it does have a bony breast plate, meaning it can kind of fly but would rather walk.
These five ratites can be found in South American, Africa, Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand. All in the southern hemisphere. It was first thought that all the ratites were just a victim of convergent evolution; meaning it was thought that they all just happened to develop the same adaptations even though they all lived apart, but once we learned about tectonic plates and Pangea the new thought is that all of these ratites originated from a common ancestor.
Then why is kiwi so small and the other ratites so gosh darn big? Well, you have to think about the habitat and predators that they and their ancestors had to deal with. The ratites had to evolve into larger, faster animals so to not get eaten and because most of the large predatory mammals evolved in the norther hemisphere, away from most ratites gave time and space for those giant ratites to evolve. As for the kiwi, since they evolved on a secluded island without the threat of any large predators they could afford to stay small.
What about the ostrich? They have large mammal predators. Your words don’t make sense. They will in just a moment. And this is partly why the ostrich is one of the weird animals of today.
**Ostrich: It’s a giant ass bird. To explain how the ostrich was able to grow so large and survive while living among, who many consider to be some of the top predators of the world, we need to take a look at the ostriches themselves.
How tall are you? The average human is around 5 foot six inches. The average ostrich is taller than that.
Fun Fact: The tallest record of an ostrich is around nine feet. Imagine coming face-to-face with that.
Pretty much all legs and neck with a fluffy giant pompom in the middle, the ostrich is built for speed. But fast isn’t always enough. Especially when you have sneaky lions and hyenas prowling around. (By the way; the ostrich is from Africa in case you’re lost) In addition to those long sexy legs, ostriches also have large eyes. The largest eyes of any land animal. Their eyes are literally the size of an eight ball. That’s five times bigger than your eyes. Why such big eyes? So, they can see danger.
Living in the African savanna and along desert lands, the ostrich needs to be able to see a long distance. And they can. And seeing that they live in large flocks it’ll be easy for at least one of them to spot that lion sneaking in from over 2 miles away. Or 3 kilometers for the rest of the world.
As you can see, to make up for evolving with large predators the ostrich just out evolved them. Literally everything about this weird giant is build to survive the dangers of Africa. Such as their speed.
They are fast. So fast. They are literally the fastest thing on two legs. Think about a marathon; you know those long ass races crazy people run for fun. The average time for a human to run a marathon is around 4 hours and twenty minutes. The world record is just over two hours, which is insane! Because that’s over 26 miles, which means that world record holder was running less then a five minute mile, for twenty six miles!! And if you’re not a runner then get up off your ass and just try to run a mile. Just one and let me know how many minutes it takes you. If you’re in shape its probably around 9 to 10 minutes, which is fairly good, but still twice as slow as fastest marathon human runner. But if an ostrich was to enter a marathon… well, it would really make us humans look as insignificant as those ostriches see us. 40 minutes. 40 minutes. That means while you’re sitting there slacking off watching a single episode of Love is Blind, an ostrich would have just run 26 miles. Hopefully its not those 26 miles to your house so to murder you.
I don’t wanna die! Disclaimer: An ostrich isn’t going to kill you. I mean I have worked with a keeper who got kicked by an ostrich and has some very bruised ribs and was out for over 2 weeks, but she didn’t die…. but she could have. End of disclaimer.
I do not feel better about ostriches. Good. Because they can most certainly kill. Not only are their legs long for running fast and far but they are also equipped with 4 inch talons on either one and, if that wasn’t terrifying enough, they can literally kill a lion with a kick. Imagine getting hit by Conor McGregor, but multiplying the force of his punch by two. That’s almost 2,000 pounds of pressure per square inch. You’d probably die too and that’s assuming those 4-inch nails didn’t slice through your skin causing you to bleed out. Aren’t ostriches just great?!
And here you thought ostriches were just the African cousin of Big Bird. Only if his cousin was living in the world of Mad Max!
Bloody Day.
Kicking the lions away.
On my way to make predators weep.
I can tell you how to get,
How to get to murder street?
Aside from their terrifying size, speed and ability to kill a man with a simply swing of their leg, ostriches have lot of other things going for them such as love. In the ostrich world its very easy to tell a male from a female. Just look at their feathers. Males have that traditional ostrich look: the center pompom is black with white tips along the wings and tail. While the females are what some would call a boring brown or tan color. And there’s a reason for this sexual dimorphism. Males need to impress and females need to sit on the egg and blend in.
Wait. Don’t most male birds who are trying to seduce a female have very brightly colored feathers? What’s so sexy about black and white feathers? Well, when he’s horny his skin does turn a bright red. But for the feathers its not so much about the feathers themselves but what the male does with those feathers. By flashing and dancing those feathers on his wings and tails he will be able to fly his way into the cloaca of as many ladies as he sees fit. Do ostriches have penises? Yes. But only about 3% of bird species have a penis. This includes the other male ratites and ducks. Then how do all those other penis-less birds have sex? With a kiss. A cloaca kiss.
Fun Fact: the cloaca is the booty hole that birds and reptiles have. And it’s the hole of wonders as it pretty much does everything: sex, pee, poop and even lays eggs. Cloaca; the Swiss army knife for animals. It does everything.
However though, when a human male gets hard it’s because of the blood that fills the penis. For the ostriches and other ratites its not blood but lymphatic fluid. What’s lymphatic fluid you ask? Its all that extra fluid that drains from cells and tissues.
Studies speculate that because only 3% of birds have penises that the penis is a just secondary sexual trait that’s simply helpful for stimulating the female. And as a female myself I can say that a penis does help to stimulate; as does active listening.
Now let me be your ostrich penis as I simulate your mind with: Scientific Names are hard. As hard as an ostrich penis filled with lymphatic fluid, I have a hard time pronouncing words that are not part of my normal vocabulary.
Ostrich: Struthio camelus
**Cassowary: A colorful murder bird. Most people know what an ostrich looks like or have at least heard of an ostrich, but not many have heard of let alone seen a cassowary. But as a ratite, and based on past commons of today’s episode, you can probably guess that a cassowary is a big flightless bird. And you’d be right. The body structure and design of the cassowary is pretty much identical to the ostrich with the exception of color, number of toes and the casque.
Let’s start with the overall look of the cassowary. First you should know that there are three species of the cassowary and all live in Northern Australia, New Guinea and surrounding islands. Which is a very different landscape from our dry ostrich friend. Cassowaries live in tropical forests and wetlands so they are a bit more vibrate! And because they don’t have large predators like lions and leopards around, they can afford to be a bit more flashy. Where the ostrich’s neck is a boring tannish white, cassowaries have a blue neck. Like really blue! And depending on the species some might have some orange or red around their neck. And if they’re a southern cassowary they might even have red wattles.
Wattle: a fleshy pendulous process usually about the head or neck.
Like how a turkey has a wattle. Only its on a giant terrifyingly blue faced bird.
If we head down the black pompom feathers middle of the bird down to the legs, you’ll find them to be long, as expected and just a more bird legs greyish/black color. For the feet the cassowary actually has normal toes. That is when compared to other birds and ratites. As it’s the ostrich who has the weird toes.
Fun Fact: Ostriches only have two toes where all other birds have three or four toes.
That means the cassowary is normal in this regard as they have three toes. But that’s where the normality stops. If you were to look at a picture of just the toes of a cassowary’s black toes you would defiantly think it was a raptor claw from Jurassic Park. Three long toes with a long thick nail protruding out from each on.
Fun Fact: Many of us may already know this but for those of you living in Steven Spielberg’s world of dinosaurs, this will come as a shock. All dinosaurs had feathers. Or something relating to feathers. And all birds today evolved from dinosaurs. That’s why ratites look so fucking scary.
Let me explain this a bit more. The bigger dinosaurs, the non-bird dinosaurs all died with the meteor and the effects from it. But the smaller dinos didn’t. Being smaller meant less food required, and being smaller meant that they have a lot more babies. Think about it. Elephants only have one baby at a time while spiders can have thousands. Another reason why birds are here today is because their dinosaur ancestors weren’t too picky, most were omnivores, so they ate what they could get. But its important to know that not all dinosaurs are or were birds but all birds were dinosaurs.
As cool as dinosaurs are, I could spend an entire episode just on dinosaurs but since we’re talking about the cassowary we should probably get back on topic. However, I should say that a recently discovered dinosaur skull looks remarkably similar to that of the cassowary.
One of the similarities scientist found were the casque. And for those of you who missed out on the Rhinoceros hornbill episode 2 missed learning about a casque. So for those of you a casque is typically a head piece of some kind that can be found on some birds and some reptiles. For the cassowary, on the top of their head looks to be a horn or helmet. This is what’s called a casque. No one really knows why cassowaries have one but they speculate it could be for one or a number of reasons: maybe the bigger the horn the more dominate the bird, maybe it helps with shock absorption when they push through all the underbrush of the rainforest, but some think it might be to help make sounds similar to hornbills. The casque of the cassowary is large (well larger in the southern northern cassowary as the dwarf cassowary’s casque is pretty pathetic in comparison). The casque is made of a sponge-like material but is also covered in a thick layer of keratin. So perhaps the sponge is helping to disburse sounds. After all the cassowary does make some very low-pitched calls that fell as though they are reaching in to your soul.
But more recent studies are thinking that maybe the casque works like the spongy beak of the toucan and is used for thermal regulation. After all it gets hot in the rainforest and no one wants to overheat. It’s referred to a thermal window as the casque will work like a window to let out heat.
Now all this stuff I’ve mention about the cassowary is weird but its also doesn’t sound all that scary: it’s a colorful bird giant with a deep voice and a horn on its head. It’s just Big Bird’s drag show cousin. Not exactly. Sure the cassowary can’t get as tall as a nine foot ostrich but they can still be in eye level of you. And if standing eye to eye with a red eyed bird isn’t terrifying then imagine it jumping over your head. Or worse swimming across a lake to chase you down. No only can a cassowary ran over 30 mph through the thick trees of their forest home but they can easily jump as high as an Olympic high jumper and use their powerful legs to swim across bodies of water.
Even though a cassowary is large enough give you a roundhouse kick to the throat they are good parents…well, fathers. You see after the mother cassowary has to deal with the male’s ratite penis, she’ll lay eggs. Green eggs. And they can be from different males too. And in the cassowary world the males are responsible for the babies. He’ll sit on those green eggs until they hatch then he’ll even raise the chicks. So when father day comes around, the award for best father might need to go to the cassowary. Especially if that father cassowary is protecting its babies. Which may be a more likely time for you to get attacked by such an animal.
To be honest mostly all of the deaths by ostriches and cassowaries were people being stupid. Either getting to close or just being an idiot and harassing the bird. Animals are going to defend themselves and their babies. You would do the same thing. So maybe we shouldn’t label these large majestic birds as murders when really they are just protectors. When animals harm humans 90% of the time it’s the human’s fault. All those people who get gorged by a bison horn were getting way to close and that sounds to be the same with ostriches and cassowaries. If you happen to share the habitat with these giant birds then do yourself a favor and view them from a distance and respect their space. After all, you’d probably go mad crazy if someone walked up to you in the street wanting to touch your hair and get a selfie.
And since we’re going mad crazy, let’s get these scientific names out of the way. Scientific names are hard.
Southern Cassowary: Casuarius casuarius
Northern Cassowary: Casuarius unappendiculatus
Dwarf Cassowary: Casuarius bennetti
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For those you sticking around, thanks, be sure to rate and review the show wherever you’re listening. And as a special treat, I’ll give you an inside scoop into next week’s special St. Patrick Day episode. SNAKES! And if you don’t get why we’ll be learning about snakes then turn in next week and between now and then, stay weird.