RE: Kickboxing Cassowary

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

Quoting "Richard W. Travsky" <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>:

> 
> On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, Chris Glen wrote:
> > Looks to me like a bug has just flown into it's ear and it doesn't like
> it,
> > and blames the nearest.... tree.
> 
> It looks like some neurological impairment. Is this "normal" behavior
> for a cassowary?

I haven't seen the footage in question (but will comment regardless!). Young 
cassowaries will practice 
their kicking attacks at any opportunity. I've seen footage of a very young 
cassowary chick that was 
hand raised. It's human carer was taking it for it's daily walk to a nearby 
pond. As soon as they got 
there, the first thing the chick did was run up to one of the resident ducks 
and start 
practicing 'cassoeira' (which is like capoeira for cassowaries). There were 
some quite spectacular 
airborne double-kicks involved (and one very outraged duck).

Could the cassowary mentioned above have been a sub-adult perhaps? If chicks 
are born with innate 
kick-boxing instincts, then I'd hate to think what a moody teenage cassowary is 
like.

-- 
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Dann Pigdon
GIS / Archaeologist              http://geo_cities.com/dannsdinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia             http://heretichides.soffiles.com
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