Cassowaries and Elementary's Pushing Buttons Episode May 14, 2018

Summary: Odors like decomposing cassowary in Elementary's Pushing Buttons May 14, 2018, likely disgust Sherlock Holmes less than what his friend Michael drags off.

southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius); Jurong Bird Park, southwestern West Region, Singapore; Saturday, Nov. 8, 2008, 09:51: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Cassowaries appear as a conversational reference with an underlying agenda in the Columbia Broadcasting System's Elementary series May 14, 2018, the procedural drama's 123rd episode overall and the sixth season's third episode.

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) brings up cassowaries in Pushing Buttons, directed by Christine Moore and written by Robert Doherty, Jeffrey Paul King and Kelly Wheeler. He convinces Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) to contact George Nix's (Robert Vincent Smith) surviving child Marcy (Gia Crovatin) by comparing her culinary creations to "decomposing cassowary." Olivia Judson for the September 2013 online issue of National Geographic magazine describes fruit-, strong black tea-, vinegar-like "Peculiar. But not unpleasant" smells detaching from cassowary droppings.

Bailom, Korowai cannibal in Indonesian New Guinea, explained to Paul Raffaele for Smithsonian Magazine online September 2006 that "Human flesh tastes like young cassowary," not pig.

Three thousand Korowai 100 miles (160.93 kilometers) inland from the Arafura Sea off Australia's Northern Territory and Indonesian New Guinea's Papua Province favor southern cassowary overlaps.

One east-coastal Cape York Peninsula's Australian southern cassowary gave the 13-member Edmund Besley Court Kennedy (Sep. 5, 1818-Dec. 4-13, 1848) Expedition, April 1848-May 1849, "delicious" flesh. The Casuariidae cassowary and emu flightless bird family member has the common name and the genus Casuarius from the Papuan words kasu ("horned") and weri ("head"). Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 19, 1778), John Gould (Sep. 14, 1804-Feb. 3, 1881) and Edward Blyth (Dec. 23, 1810-Dec. 27, 1873) investigated different cassowary species.

Linnaeus in 1758 juggled Australian, double-wattled, southern or two-wattled cassowaries into Casuarius casuarius, species of the Aru Islands, Cape York Peninsula, northwestern New Guinea and Seram.

Gould's Casuarius bennetti in 1857 kept Bennett's, dwarf, little, mountain cassowaries, for George Bennett (Jan. 31, 1804-Sep. 28, 1893), of Japen, New Britain and New Guinea.

Blyth in 1860 listed for the species Casuarius unappendiculatus ("horned-head," "one-appendaged" ["one-wattled"]) gold-neck, golden-necked, northern, one-wattled, single-wattled cassowaries of Batanta, Japen, northern New Guinea and Salawati. Lowland southern and northern and highland dwarf cassowaries maintain some New Guinea overlaps but manifest species-specific behaviors, body colors and sizes, distribution ranges and habitat niches. All cassowaries need barbed, shafted feathers, big feet, bright wattles (hanging neck flesh), head casques, long legs, sharp-clawed middle toes, small wings and ultraviolet light-receptive eyes.

Cassowaries obtain individualized casque markings and shapes, 1.5-meter- (4.92-foot-) high jumps and 50-kilometer (31.07-mile) hourly speeds and observe forest-obscured flowers, fruits and seeds by ultraviolet wavelengths.

Cassowaries pursue carrion, fungi, insects, snails and, preferentially, aspen, bleeding-heart, celerywood, laurel, myrtle, nutmeg, onionwood and palm fruits and pine, quandong, satinash, ylang and zigzag flowers.

Life cycles queue cassowaries along solitary paths on gender-exclusive, side-by-side territories where April-June and male-monitored July-September and August-June respectively qualify as breeding, incubating and offspring-raising months. Mating results in several clutches of three to eight forest floor-deposited, green 17.64- to 21.16-ounce (500- to 600-gram) eggs that render black- and cream-striped, brown-headed chicks. One-year-olds and six-year-olds respectively sustain all-brown bodies, blue-and-red-necked, blue-headed, gray-billed, gray-limbed, 14- to 59-kilogram (30.86 to 130.07-pound), 102- to 170-centimeter- (40.16- to 66.93-inch-) long black bodies.

Decomposition teems with smells perhaps no more nauseating from crocodile-, dingo-, people-, python, quoll-terminated cassowaries than from whomever Michael (Desmond Harrington) takes down before Season 7.

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) compares Joan Watson's (Lucy Liu) culinary creations to "decomposing cassowary" in Elementary tv series' Pushing Buttons (season 6 episode 3); Sherlock finds that the Filter Weld lenses in a 1930s welder's mask is more effective against glare than sunglasses, but will the mask also block odors?: Elementary @Elementary_CBS, via Twitter May 14, 2018

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius); Jurong Bird Park, southwestern West Region, Singapore; Saturday, Nov. 8, 2008, 09:51: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jurong_Southern_Cassowary.jpg;
via bjørnfree.com @ https://www.pvv.org/~bct/singapore/imagepages/image15.htm

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) compares Joan Watson's (Lucy Liu) culinary creations to "decomposing cassowary" in Elementary tv series' Pushing Buttons (season 6 episode 3); Sherlock finds that the Filter Weld lenses in a 1930s welder's mask is more effective against glare than sunglasses, but will the mask block odors?: Elementary @Elementary_CBS via Twitter May 14, 2018, @ https://twitter.com/Elementary_CBS/status/996216094380539904

For further information:

Blyth, Edward. 1860. "XXIV. Letters, Extracts From Correspondence, Notices, Etc.: Mr. Blyth in his last letters (dated Calcutta, Jan. 8th & 21st) speaks of an apparently new species of Cassowary (Casuarius) [Casuarius unappendiculatus] . . ." The Ibis, vol. II, no. VI (April 1860): 193. London, England: Trübner and Co.; Paris, France: Fr. Klincksieck; Leipzig, Germany: F.A. Brockhaus; New York NY: B. Westermann & Co.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/8594339

"Cassowaries." Tropical Topics 2012. Cairns, Queensland, Australia: Wet Tropics Management Authority.
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Davies, S.J.J.F. (Stephen John James Frank). "Cassowaries (Casuariidae)." Pages 75-81. In: Michael Hutchins, Jerome A. Jackson, Walter J. Bock and Donna Olendorf, eds. Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia. Second edition. Volume 8, Birds I: 75-81. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2002.

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Gould, John. 1868. "Casuarius Uniappendiculatus, Blyth. One-carunculated Cassowary." The Birds of Australia. Supplement: pages 145-146, Plates 74-75. London, England: Printed for the Author by Taylor and Francis.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/birdsAustraliasSuppGoul#page/74/mode/1up

Gould, John. 1857. "On a New Species of Cassowary: Casuarius Bennetti (Pl. CXXIX)." Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, part XXV (Dec. 8, 1857): 269-270. London, England: Printed for The Society by Taylor and Francis.
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Judson, Olivia. September 2013. "Big Bird." National Geographic > Magazine 2013/09 > Cassowaries.
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Linnaeus, Carl. 1758. "2. Struthio casuarius." Systema Naturae per Regna Tria Naturae, Secundum Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, cum Characteribus, Differentiis, Synonymis, Locis. Tomus I, Editio Decima, Reformata: 155. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
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