With sharp claws growing up to five inches long, cassowaries can be as dangerous as they are elusive.

But that has not stopped post-graduate student Tom Lawton from getting as close to them as possible.

Mr Lawton is studying the endangered southern cassowary to change the public records of estimates and reported sightings into scientific data.

Currently there are only an estimated 4,500 cassowaries remaining in the wet tropics of Far North Queensland.

Mr Lawton said he was trying to find out what happens after a male cassowary — the one charged with parental duties after chicks hatch — decides to sever ties with his young.

"It's assumed that the mortality rate of the young when they're trying to fend for themselves is high so if we can understand more about the cycle and what's actually happening to the birds … then we can try to make some inroads into giving these birds the best chance of survival," he said.

"What we're actually doing is using ingestible tags with the birds, as far as the Daintree and down to Innisfail.

"We're getting the birds to swallow these data loggers, they go off into the scrub, go about their usual daily foraging activity and when they pop it out the other end we find the tag and grab a heap of information.

"We radio-track the bird, we have 12 tags and each one gives out a different frequency so we can track 12 cassowaries at one time."

Fruit farms like 'ecological sink' for cassowaries

Mr Lawton and other researchers have so far established nine trails often used by cassowaries.

And it is on these trails that, sometimes as early as 4:30 am, the researchers set up food stations with the hidden tracking devices.

The AA-battery-sized data trackers safely pass through the cassowary's digestive system and are later picked up by researchers. ( Supplied: Tom Lawton )

Mr Lawton said half a banana was the perfect place to hide the AA-battery-sized radio tracking tags to ensure cassowaries ingest them.

"The reason we're doing this is to get some baseline data on the birds' foraging ecology," he said.

"We know for a fact at Mission Beach we get increased sightings of birds and increased road strikes around banana farms, so we hypothesise it's an area containing high energy sugar foods.

"That's like an ecological sink, it's just drawing birds in and the birds aren't playing their role as a cassowary should in [its] natural environment, like dispersing seeds and occupying territory."

Mr Lawton is about 18 months away from finalising his findings but hoped to educate agencies looking to establish roads, farms and other land-clearing projects about potential impacts on cassowary populations.