Cassowaries are among the very few birds that can kill a person. A cassowary can charge up to 30 miles an hour and leap more than 3 feet in the air. On each foot are three claws—one slightly curved like a scimitar, the other two straight as daggers—that are so sharp New Guinea tribesmen slide them over spear points. People have had ribs broken, legs cracked and flesh gashed.
The last person documented to have been killed by a cassowary was 16-year-old Phillip McLean from Queensland, Australia.
After encountering the bird on their family property, and despite the size of the brightly coloured flightless bird before them, McClean and his brother, three years his junior, decided to kill it with clubs. It was a fatal mistake. Armed with its long-and-sharp-clawed foot, the bird kicks the younger boy, who flees. When McClean struck the bird it knocked him down. Laying vulnerable, the bird then kicked him in the neck, opening a 1.25 cm long cut in one of his main blood vessels. Though the boy managed to get back on his feet and run away, he collapsed a short while later and died from the hemorrhage.
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