Angry cassowary chases rangers in wild video: 'Like Jurassic Park'

A group of rangers in Far North Queensland has described the terrifying moment they were chased through the bush by an angry cassowary.

“It was like a scene out of Jurassic Park,” one told the Cape York Weekly.

“I’ve been working in wildlife for years and I’ve never seen anything like that,” another said.

Wuthathi Land and Sea Custodians were heading back to base after inspecting tracks in an extremely remote part of Northern Cape York Peninsula when they ran into the large bird.

Senior Custodian Cameron Wilson was the first to get a feeling “that something was following him.”

“When he spun around, he spotted the determined cassowary chasing him at full speed,” the Wuthathi Aboriginal Corporation said on Facebook.

“The cassowary made Cameron ‘park his vehicle’ and he had a tense seven minutes one-on-one with the cassowary until the rest of the team arrived to find Cameron bailed up behind his quad bike."

Jumping back on his bike, Mr Wilson joined the rest of the group as they fled the cassowary who remained in hot pursuit.

“He just wouldn’t let us go,” ranger Clayton Enoch told the Cape York Weekly.

“He was flying alongside me and he let out this pterodactyl-like noise out of his beak."

He added that the casque on top of its head was close to 30 centimetres long.

As the bird turned its attention to the rest of the group sitting in a six-seater buggy, dramatic footage caught the creature chasing them through the bush.

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“We kept thinking, ‘what if this cassowary catches us’,” Indigenous Protected Area Coordinator Sophie Holt said.

“We were just praying there weren’t any logs or debris on the track.”

Fortunately, after almost a kilometre the cassowary, known affectionately as CC for Cameron’s cassowary, gave up the chase.

Social media star

Footage of the dramatic chase through the bush has since gone viral, racking up more than 185,000 views.

Horrified users described the encounter as “what nightmares are made of”.

“Tenacious, fast and lots of stamina,” one person wrote. “I can’t believe how far that bird ran to catch them!”

“Those crowned heads of theirs can cut right through the bush when they run,” another said. “[They] wouldn’t have stood a snowball’s chance in hell if they’d been on foot in the woods.”

“Cassowaries are nothing but Velociraptors with feathers,” someone else added.

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