A Florida man who kept the world’s most dangerous bird as part of an endangered-species breeding effort was fatally attacked while trying to protect its eggs.
Marvin Hajos, 75, of Alachua in northern Florida, maintained exotic animals on his property including two breeding pairs of cassowaries, the flightless birds native to Australia and New Guinea that share family ties with ostriches and emus. His friend Jim Glynn told Fox 35 that Hajos was so passionate about the species that he was regularly invited to lecture about them.
Hajos had been working to help preserve cassowaries, which are endangered in the wild. The birds are typically wary of humans and will flee when encountered, though they can turn aggressive if cornered or provoked.
The situation turned deadly in 2019 when Hajos noticed one of his female cassowaries protecting her eggs from the males, screeching at them. Male cassowaries can become agitated during breeding season and attempt to smash eggs, a behavior that had left the female distressed and defensive as she tried to fend them off.
Hajos entered the enclosure to retrieve the eggs and place them in an incubator, hoping to prevent their destruction by the males or in the general confusion. It was during this rescue attempt that one of the large birds launched itself at him, knocking him to the ground.
“We believe he went in there to recover that egg and then at some point the bird was able to make its attack,” Lieutenant Brett Rhodenizer of the County Sheriff Department said.
Hajos managed to call his daughter for help, but she was unable to intervene. His family said afterwards that he died “doing what he loved.”
The cassowary’s lethal potential lies in its anatomy. The Southern Cassowary stands around 1.8 metres tall and weighs approximately 45kg, with the ability to run at 30mph. Most striking are its feet, which sport a large claw on the toe reminiscent of a velociraptor — though the birds are actually much larger than velociraptors were.
Despite their fearsome reputation and appearance, confirmed fatal cassowary attacks on humans remain extraordinarily rare. Hajos was only the second person known to have been killed by one. The previous confirmed fatality occurred in 1926, when an Australian teenager and his friends struck a cassowary with a club, prompting the bird to launch a fatal counterattack.