Before petting chickens and geese, our ancestors used to pet world’s most dangerous bird, Cassowary around several millennia ago.
Cassowary, native to northern Australia and New Guinea is considered the world’s most dangerous bird. The quick legs equipped with long dagger-like-toes can cause fatal injuries to humans with just one kick if provoked. The internet is filled with videos of human stupidity experiencing the wrath of these innocent-looking birds.
It is quite unbelievable that humans around 18,000 years ago used to breed them like chickens, a study reported. An analysis of the eggshells found in New Guinea has confirmed the fact.
The study to discover Cassowary as pet
The inspection of fossilized eggshells found in the two rock tents in New Guinea has confirmed that our ancestors might have collected the eggs of the cassowary birds to hatch and pet them to adulthood.
One of the authors of the study group, Kristina Douglass, assistant professor of anthropology and African studies, Penn State has said that these birds were kept as pets thousands of years before the domestication of hens and chicken. “And this is not some small fowl, it is a huge, ornery, flightless bird that can eviscerate you. Most likely the dwarf variety that weighs 20 kilos (44 pounds),” she said in a statement.
While representing the data at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Douglas and her team noted that the fossilized eggshells could be the earliest attempts of the human to breed an avian taxon (bird) around several millennia ahead of domesticating chickens.
The Southern Cassowary
The most common, the southern cassowary, is the third-tallest and second-heaviest living bird, only smaller than the ostrich and emu. There is a total of four species. But the fourth species known as Pygmy Cassowary is extinct. The other two species are known as the northern cassowary and the dwarf cassowary. They are usually shy and wary of human beings.
Cassowaries have three-toed feet with sharp claws. The second toe of the bird looks like a dagger-like claw that may be 125 mm (5 in) long. This claw is particularly fearsome as it sometimes kicks humans and other animals. These birds having their roots linked to dinosaurs, can run up to 50 km/h (30 mph) through a dense forest and can jump up to 1.5 m (5 ft).