Southern Cassowary

Description:

Cassowaries are Gondwanan in origin and were concentrated in the small part of the supercontinent that later broke apart and became the present areas of Northern Australia, Papua New Guinea and some of the eastern island groups of Indonesia. Two separate populations of Australian cassowary exist - one in the Wet Tropics area from Mt Halifax/Paluma through to Cooktown and the other on Cape York Peninsula in the McIlwraith and Iron Ranges, Jardine River area and the Eastern Dunes. The Australian cassowary is called the Southern Cassowary or sometimes the Double-wattled Cassowary. Once you realise that this species is also found in Papua New Guinea along with two more species and several subspecies, then it becomes clear why ours is called the Southern Cassowary.

Notes:

Why Cassowaries Are So Important Rainforests would be a very different place with diminished diversity if there were no cassowaries. These huge birds are the only animals capable of distributing the seeds of more than 70 species of trees whose fruit is too large for any other forest dwelling animal to eat and relocate. If these trees did not have an animal to disperse their seeds, they would only occur in concentrated pockets around the parent tree or in places where the seeds rolled such as gullies or the bottom of slopes. As a result over a long period of time the structure of large tracts of forest might change. In tropical rainforests in other parts of the world there are a wide range of animals which fulfill this role. In the Wet Tropics the cassowary plays the role which is accomplished by entire guilds of animals elsewhere. There are at least another 80 species of plants which are also assisted by the cassowary's eating habits. These species have smaller seeds but many are toxic and only the cassowary can safely consume them. Such dangerous eating habits are possible because the cassowary has a short/rapid digestive system which appears to be supported by an overactive liver and an unusual combination of stomach enzymes. Other animals such as White-tailed Rats may help distribute these smaller seeds but more often than not, they damage the seed rather than dispersing it intact. So the cassowary is vital for the widespread continuance of over 150 species of plants. That is why the cassowary is referred to as a "keystone species".