Man kept ‘world’s most dangerous bird’ as pet that killed him in gruesome fashion
A man died after being attacked by a fearsome bird that he had been keeping at his home.
Marvin Hajos was fascinated by wildlife, but one animal in particular captured his interest.
This was the cassowary, a fearsome flightless bird from the same family as ostriches and emus which lives in Australia and New Guinea and has a fierce reputation.
The most recent was 75-year-old Marvin Hajos, who lived in Alachua in northern Florida in the US where he kept exotic animals including cassowaries no his property.
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Marvin had a deep fascination with birds, especially cassowaries, with his friend Jim Glynn telling Fox 35 that he was even invited regularly to speak about them in lectures.
He had been trying to help to preserve the species as they are endangered in the natural environment, keeping two breeding pairs at his house.
Sadly, it was these efforts which would prove fatal for Marvin during an incident in 2019 which ended in tragedy, the Daily Record reports.
Cassowaries for the most part are wary of humans, and will mostly just walk or run away when encountered.
However in certain circumstances they can become aggressive, for example if cornered or provoked.
In Marvin's case, it the presence of eggs which made the cassowaries more dangerous than they might otherwise have been.
Marvin noticed that one of the female cassowaries was protecting her eggs from the males, screeching at them.
Part of cassowaries' behaviour is that males can become agitated and even attempt to smash eggs, particularly when it is breeding season for the species.
This has resulted in one of the females becoming distressed and defensive as she tried to fend off the male.
In an effort to defuse the situation, Marvin had gone to try and retrieve the eggs and put them in an incubator so that they would be less likely to be destroyed by the male, or during the general confusion.
Unfortunately, while he was retrieving them one of the large birds launched itself at him, knocking him to the ground.
Lieutenant Brett Rhodenizer, from the County Sheriff Department, said: “We believe he went in there to recover that egg and then at some point the bird was able to make its attack.”
He called his daughter for help but there was nothing she could do to intervene.
Marvin's family said afterwards that he died 'doing what he loved'.
One look at a cassowary and it's not hard to see why they are regarded as one of the most dangerous birds out there, even though they only attack humans if provoked or scared.
Firstly, they are large birds, with the Southern Cassowary measuring around 1.8 metres tall and weighing around 45kg, and also capable of running at 30mph.
But it's a look at a cassowary's feet which reminds us just where birds come from, as they sport a large claw on their toe reminiscent of a velociraptor, though they're actually much bigger than velociraptors were.
Despite this however, Marvin was only the second person confirmed to have been fatally attacked by a cassowary, with the other attack happening in 1926 when an Australian teenager and his friends hit a cassowary with a club, after which the bird launched a fatal attack.
Kit Roberts