Does anyone else ever have those moments when you find out a particular piece of information and can’t believe that you weren’t aware of it already? Not because it is something you would have liked to have known, but because it falls within a subject that you hear or read a lot about and you really should have come across it earlier. Well, I had one of those moments today, and I’d like to introduce you to the bird so scary it doesn’t need to fly, the ninja of New Guinea, the third largest bird in the world, heir to the throne of Gondor, the Cassowary.

If you were to walk through the rainforests of New Guinea or northwestern Australia you’d probably never lay eyes on one of these cockatrice-like monsters, since they prefer to work incognito and will stealthily split when they hear a human coming. Well, most of the time they will split. If one chooses to stick around you can consider yourself unlucky enough to see firsthand why the Cassowary is notorious amongst the locals for having a very short fuse. In fact, they hold the world record for being the most dangerous bird alive today (by today I mean 2007). One little tidbit I got from the wikipedia page, where I admittedly got most my information on this bird, says that during WWII, troops stationed in New Guinea were told to stay away from the Cassowaries because of how aggressive they can be. These are fully grown men with guns that are trained to kill other fully grown men with guns, but they better stay away from old crazy eyes over there or shit is going to get real ugly real fast.

The cassowary isn’t just dangerous because it is mean. It is less akin to a schoolyard bully than it is to a highly trained martial artist. You know that crazy master in Kill Bill who had that technique where he would hit someone a couple times and then their heart would explode after they took a few steps? Well the cassowary has a similar technique. What it does is kick you in the stomach, then a little bit later you die of an intestinal rupture.

I would like to drop some more scientific facts, maybe do some comparisons to the other flightless birds of today or gastornis, phorusrhacos, and the terror birds of ancient South America. However, most of the spare minutes I had to research and write this I spent watching this video over and over.

-Wolverox