Well, do you know who the deadliest bird in the world is? And the interesting fact is this deadliest bird used to be a pet almost 18,000 years ago. Yes, the Southern cassowary bird is known as the most dangerous bird in the world and was domesticated thousands of years ago.
The team of researchers and scientists have found cassowary eggshells in New Guinea which shows the lethal bird was domesticated over 18,000 years ago. This bird is native to the forests of New Guinea and Northern Australia, in captivity, the bird shows intense aggression.
They are the close descendants of the velociraptors, the fierce dinosaurs featured in the movie Jurassic park, cassowaries have been documented lethal wounding other animals and even humans, like the caged cassowary bird that mortally wounded its owner in Florida or the cassowary that killed an Australian teenager in 1926, as per the reports suggested.
The cassowaries weigh almost 150 pounds with having reptilian legs which stretch to almost 6 feet tall. And you know what the most dangerous weapon of these birds is? Their 4-inch talons, by which they considered to be the most dangerous bird in the world. When cassowaries feel scared or threatened, they charge at lightning speed, talon first into their victim. These attacks occur every year and result in serious injuries, as per the reports. The injuries like puncture wounds, broken bones, lacerations, and some cases reported of death also.
Thousands of years before the domestication of the chicken, cassowaries were raised by the people in New Guinea from arising to adulthood. Furthermore, Cassowaries are flightless birds and are closely related to emus. They are the third-tallest and second-heaviest living birds on the planet. If we dig into human history then human beings arrived in New Guinea 42,000 years ago. Reportedly, those settlers would have been found in the rainforests inhabited by the dangerous southern cassowary bird. But it was the time of thousands of years ago, 18000 years from the present. Human beings found a way to use the birds and since then they were being domesticated.
While the revealing site of a primitive rock shelter, an archaeologist, found a number of artifacts and bird remains and among them more than 1,000 fragments of cassowary eggshells. Now, this is entirely wondering what the people who lived in these early rock shelters were doing with the eggs, the archaeologists brought them back to the lab.
The research team started scanning the shells with 3D laser microscopes which reveals how far along each egg had been before hatching. Some eggs had burn marks, showing that they were being cooked and eaten in the past times. Whereas, some were almost fully developed. There’s a big possibility that people were hatching those eggs and rearing cassowary chicks. Furthermore, scientists point to Indigenous groups in the country that use cassowary meat and feathers in trade and for rituals. These groups still raise the cassowaries from eggs taken out of their nests. As for them, stealing the cassowary eggs is no easy task. Their nests are hidden deep in the forest and guarded by unforgiving, violent males. The Ancient New Guineans would’ve tracked the cassowaries and followed their movements. If the early inhabitants of New Guinea really did collect eggs, raise chicks, and hand-rear cassowaries in that past times then they were likely some of the earliest known humans to tame foul and domesticated birds.
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