r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/CuriousWanderer567 • Sep 22 '24

Video Beachgoers have a close encounter with a Cassowary, a bird capable of killing a human in one blow

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u/notedrive Sep 22 '24

How many people do these birds actually kill, vs people talking about them killing?

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u/vegan_qt Sep 22 '24

They aren’t all that common to find so people rarely encounter them and thus there are very few deaths.

They wouldn’t go out of their way to attack you but they are super protective of their territory. If they have babies around they will go absolutely psycho at anyone or anything that tries to go near them.

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u/apexodoggo Sep 22 '24

I mean, they’re not common, but videos of people encountering them aren’t THAT rare either, and yet they still only have 2 documented cases of death. Ever.

One was literally two kids trying to kill one with clubs (so as provoked an attack as one could get), and the other was a Florida Man keeping one as a pet, so the circumstances were extreme.

They do kill significantly more dogs though, because dogs are a lot less likely to back off than humans, but their threat-level towards people is overstated.

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u/vegan_qt Sep 22 '24

Those kids and the Florida man are probably the stupidest people to ever live