Emu

• 1. Introduction

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  The emu is a flightless bird from Australia that once outran an army. In 1932, soldiers carrying machine guns were sent after emus in Western Australia, and the birds largely avoided the hunters. This is a creature with legs strong enough to tear down metal fencing. Yet it is also a bird that settlers hunted and farmed, and one that Australians later put on their national symbols.

  This documentary asks how a large bird survives drought and heat in the Australian interior. It asks why the fathers, rather than the mothers, stay behind to raise the young. It also asks how a species can be common across a continent while its island cousins vanished soon after European arrival.

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• 2. Names and Naming

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  In 1696, the Dutch captain Willem de Vlamingh sailed the western coast of Australia, searching for survivors of a ship missing for two years. His expedition produced the first recorded sighting of emus by Europeans. The birds had no European name yet. By 1789, Arthur Phillip's Voyage to Botany Bay was calling the bird the New Holland cassowary. It described a creature seven feet two inches long, with brown and grey plumage and wings too short to fly.

  The ornithologist John Latham, who helped with Phillip's book, formally named the species in 1790 from a specimen taken near Sydney. His genus name Dromaius comes from a Greek word meaning racer. The second half, novaehollandiae, points to New Holland, which was then the name for Australia. Together they translate roughly as fast-footed New Hollander.

  Spelling then started a quarrel that has never fully ended. When the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot described the emu in 1816, he used two genus names, first Dromiceius and later Dromaius. The second is better formed, but taxonomic custom says the first name given should stand. Most modern publications, including those of the Australian government, use Dromaius and list the other as an alternative.

  The everyday word emu is just as uncertain. One theory traces it to an Arabic word for a large bird, later borrowed by Portuguese explorers for the cassowary. Another points to the Portuguese word ema, used for a big bird like an ostrich or crane. Aboriginal peoples had their own names. In Victoria the bird was barrimal to the Dja Dja Wurrung, myoure to the Gunai, and courn to the Jardwadjali. Around Sydney, the Eora and Darug called it murawung or birabayin.

  Scientists have also reshuffled the family tree. A 2014 study by Mitchell and colleagues, using mitochondrial DNA, placed emus in their own family, Dromaiidae, and split the cassowaries into a separate order. Meanwhile three island forms were lost. The dwarf emus of Kangaroo Island and King Island died out shortly after Europeans arrived, and the Tasmanian emu followed around 1865. The mainland subspecies survives. In 2009 its numbers were estimated at between 630,000 and 725,000 birds, a figure that rises and falls with rainfall.

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• 3. Built for the Outback

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  A galloping emu can cover 275 centimetres in a single stride, nearly three times its walking stride of about 100 centimetres. It can sprint at 48 km/h. The engine is in the legs. The muscles of the pelvic limb make up about as much of the body's mass as flight muscles do in flying birds. Emus are also the only birds whose calf muscle, the gastrocnemius, has four bellies instead of three. Each foot has just three toes, and each toe ends in a sharp claw. Toe and claw together measure 15 centimetres, and kicking with them is the emu's main defence.

  The bird itself is big. Only the ostrich stands taller, and the largest emus reach between 150 and 190 centimetres. Adults weigh between 18 and 60 kilograms, slightly more on average than an emperor penguin. Females run a little larger than males and are much wider across the rump. The wings are vestigial, each about 20 centimetres long and tipped with a small claw. Emus flap them while running, perhaps to keep themselves steady. The bill is small and soft, suited to grazing, and good eyesight and hearing let the bird spot danger from far off.

  The shaggy grey-brown plumage is a heat shield. The shafts and tips of the feathers are black and absorb sunlight, while the inner feathers insulate the skin. That arrangement lets emus stay active through the hottest part of the day. Each feather carries a double rachis growing from a single shaft, a feature unique to the emu. Colour follows the landscape. Birds on red soils in arid country take on a rufous tint, and those in damp regions run darker. The pale blue neck shows through the thin feathering, and the eyes are shielded by translucent inner eyelids that sweep sideways to keep out dust.

  On very hot days, emus pant, and their lungs act as evaporative coolers. In cooler weather, their folded nasal passages warm incoming air and then pull moisture back out of each exhaled breath for reuse. Their comfortable temperature range lies between 10 and 30 degrees Celsius.

  Night brings its own routine. At sunset an emu squats on its lower legs in a drowsy state, ready to jump up if disturbed. After about twenty minutes of calm it sinks onto the ground with its legs folded and its neck bent into an S-shape. Rain runs off the feathers, and the pose may be camouflage that mimics a small mound. About every ninety minutes the bird stands for ten to twenty minutes to feed or defecate. Altogether it sleeps around seven hours in each twenty-four. What it does while awake is mostly a matter of eating, and the menu is stranger than most people expect.

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• 4. Appetite and Water

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  A single emu can carry as much as 745 grams of small stones in its gizzard. Individual stones can weigh around 45 grams, and they help grind up tough plant matter. Emus also swallow charcoal, for reasons that are unclear. Captive birds have been recorded eating glass shards, marbles, car keys, jewellery, and nuts and bolts.

  The natural diet is wide. Acacia, Casuarina, and grasses are favourites, along with insects and other arthropods such as grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, cockroaches, ladybirds, ants, spiders, and millipedes. Those animals supply a large share of the bird's protein. In Western Australia, travelling emus follow a seasonal menu. They eat Acacia aneura seeds until the rains arrive, then switch to fresh grass shoots and caterpillars. In winter they turn to the leaves and pods of Cassia, and in spring to grasshoppers and the fruit of a quandong species. They will also raid wheat and other crops, climbing high fences when they have to.

  Emus drink only occasionally, but they drink deeply. Typically they come to water once a day. They first inspect the water and its surroundings as a group, then kneel at the edge. If they sense danger, they often stay standing instead. Undisturbed, an emu may drink continuously for ten minutes, though scarce water sometimes forces birds to go several days without a drink. At waterholes shared with kangaroos, emus are wary and tend to wait until the other animals have left.

  Feeding has consequences for the landscape. Emus disperse large viable seeds, which helps plant diversity. In early twentieth-century Queensland, however, they ate the fruit of prickly pear and scattered the seeds of the invasive cactus across the outback. That led to hunting campaigns against the birds. An introduced moth, Cactoblastis cactorum, finally controlled the cactus. Its larvae fed on the plant, making this one of the earliest examples of biological control.

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• 5. Courtship and Fatherhood

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  In the warm months of December and January, emus pair off, and the pair may stay together for about five months. The courtship that follows is led by the female. Her plumage darkens slightly, and bare patches of skin beneath her eyes and near her beak turn turquoise-blue. She strides around with her neck pulled back and her feathers puffed out. She makes low, single-note calls that have been compared to drum beats, and these can carry to a male more than 50 metres away.

  Those sounds come from an inflatable throat pouch more than 30 centimetres long. The bird controls the pitch by changing the size of the opening. A high-intensity boom can be heard 2 kilometres away. Females do most of the booming, and males do most of the grunting. Once a male takes notice, the female circles him at a distance of 10 to 40 metres, keeping her rump toward him. If he is interested, he stretches his neck, raises his feathers, pecks at the ground, and sways from side to side. She signals acceptance by squatting and raising her rump.

  Rivals do not take this calmly. Fights between females account for more than half of the aggressive encounters during the courting season. An incumbent female chases and kicks any newcomer who courts her mate, and the contest can last up to five hours. Mating usually runs from April to June, timed so that nesting falls in the coolest part of the year.

  The male builds the nest, a rough hollow on the ground lined with bark, grass, sticks, and leaves. He picks a spot with a clear view of the surroundings. A female stores sperm enough to fertilise about six eggs. Every second or third day she lays another of five to fifteen thick-shelled green eggs. Each egg averages 13 by 9 centimetres and weighs between 450 and 650 grams. A nest may hold 15 to 25 eggs from several females. Emus were also the first birds in which genetically identical twins were verified.

  Then the male takes over, and his sacrifice is extreme. During the 56 days of incubation he does not eat, drink, or defecate. He stands only to turn the eggs, about ten times a day. He lives on stored fat and whatever morning dew he can reach, and he loses a third of his weight. Meanwhile the female usually wanders off, and in a good season she may nest three times. Infidelity is the norm, and brood parasitism is common. As many as half the chicks in a nest may not be the incubating male's.

  The eggs hatch within two days of one another, even though they were laid in sequence. The newborn chicks stand about 12 centimetres tall and weigh half a kilogram. They carry brown and cream stripes that fade after roughly three months. The father guards them for up to seven months, teaches them to find food, and ruffles his feathers and kicks at intruders, even the mother. At night he covers his young with his feathers. The chicks are fully grown in five to six months, and some family groups stay together until the next breeding season. In the wild an emu lives upward of ten years, while in captivity it can reach twenty.

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• 6. Dingoes and Eagles

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  The dingo is the emu's main predator today, and the fight between them is a matter of timing. Dingoes aim for the head. The emu leaps into the air as the dingo lunges, then kicks or stamps on the way down. Because a dingo can barely jump high enough to reach the emu's neck, a well-timed leap keeps the vulnerable head out of reach. The dingo was brought to Australia thousands of years ago by Aboriginal people, from semi-domesticated wolves.

  Long before the dingo, emus may have faced a harsher cast. The giant lizard Megalania, the thylacine, and other carnivorous marsupials may once have hunted them. That could explain the bird's well-developed defences. Even so, dingoes do not appear to hold emu numbers down much, since other natural conditions kill just as many.

  The wedge-tailed eagle is the only bird of prey able to attack a fully grown emu, though it more often takes small or young birds. It dives at speed and aims for the head and neck. The jumping trick fails against an attack from above. Instead, the emu bolts erratically and changes direction often. The eagle tries to catch it on open ground, where it cannot hide behind obstacles.

  Adult emus are rarely killed, but their eggs and small chicks are easier targets. Dingoes, raptors, monitor lizards, introduced red foxes, feral and domestic dogs, and feral pigs all take them occasionally.

  Smaller enemies cause trouble too. The emu carries the louse Dahlemhornia asymmetrica, among other lice, ticks, mites, and flies. Chicks can suffer intestinal infections from coccidian protozoa. Nematodes such as Trichostrongylus tenuis cause bleeding diarrhoea, while Syngamus trachea and Cyathostoma variegatum attack the windpipe and lungs. On farms, emus carry fewer parasites than ostriches or rheas.

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• 7. Emus and People

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  Aboriginal Australians used an inventive set of tricks to catch emus. Hunters speared birds as they drank at waterholes or caught them in nets. They also imitated emu calls, or dangled a ball of feathers and rags from a tree to arouse the birds' curiosity. The pitchuri thornapple, or a similar poisonous plant, could be used to taint a waterhole so the disoriented birds were easy to take. Hunters also wore skins as disguises and lured emus into camouflaged pits.

  Killing was meant to meet necessity, and hunting for any other reason was frowned upon. Nothing was wasted. The fat gave a valuable oil that served as bush medicine and skin lotion. It lubricated and oiled wooden tools such as the coolamon, and it was mixed with ochre into paint for ceremonial body decoration. Bones were shaped into knives and tools, feathers adorned the body, and tendons replaced string. The Arrernte of Central Australia, who call the bird Kere ankerre, described a method of cooking it. They plucked the feathers first, removed the crop, and singed the carcass over a fire. The meat was then cut up and cooked over river red gum wood.

  Early European settlers killed emus for food and burned the fat in lamps. They also tried to keep the birds away from crops and out of settlements, which emus invaded in search of water during droughts. In 1932, a dry spell around Chandler and Walgoolan in Western Australia drew emus in large flocks. They damaged rabbit fencing and devastated crops. Only two attacks on humans by emus have been documented, though the birds defend their young fiercely.

  Farming came later. Commercial emu farming began in Western Australia around 1970, with stock bred in captivity, and every state except Tasmania requires licences to protect wild birds. Outside Australia the birds are farmed on a large scale in North America, with about 1 million birds in the United States, Peru, and China. They are kept in big open pens, because inactivity causes leg and digestive problems, and are slaughtered at 15 to 18 months. Roughly 95 percent of the carcass can be used. The meat contains less than 1.5 percent fat. In the United States it counts as red meat for cooking but as poultry for inspection.

  The business has been a gamble. In 2012, officials in India's Salem district advised farmers not to invest in the emu trade, which was being heavily promoted. In the United States, growers were estimated to have dropped from over five thousand in 1998 to one or two thousand in 2013. Those who remain depend increasingly on oil.

  That oil is rendered from fat, and its main components are oleic acid at 42 percent and linoleic and palmitic acids at 21 percent each. In tests on rats, it eased arthritis and joint pain better than olive or fish oil did. It has also been shown to speed wound healing. There are no scientific studies showing it works in humans. In a 2009 article titled How to Spot Health Fraud, the USDA called pure emu oil an unapproved drug. Emu leather has a distinctive patterned surface and appears in wallets, handbags, and shoes.

  The eggs found a different kind of fame. In the second half of the nineteenth century, travelling silversmiths turned hundreds of emptied emu eggs into mounted goblets, inkstands, and vases. They decorated them with Australian plants, animals, and Indigenous people. Among the designers were Adolphus Blau, Julius Hogarth, Ernest Leviny, and Julius Schomburgk. They were continuing a tradition that stretched back to mounted ostrich eggs in thirteenth-century Europe.

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• 8. Sky, Symbol and Survival

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  According to the Yuwaalaraay and other groups in New South Wales, the sun was made when an emu's egg was thrown into the sky. Many Aboriginal language groups see the dark dust lanes of the Milky Way as a giant emu overhead. Another story, from Western Australia, tells of a man who annoyed a small bird. The bird threw a boomerang that severed his arms and turned him into a flightless emu. In Central Australia, the Kurdaitcha man is said to wear sandals of emu feathers to hide his footprints. Among the Kaurna people of the Adelaide region, hunting emus, called kari, features in the great Dreaming story of the ancestor hero Tjilbruke. Emus also appear in Sydney rock engravings and Indigenous dances.

  The bird is popularly, though unofficially, treated as Australia's national bird. It stands as a shield bearer beside the red kangaroo on the national Coat of arms, and it also appears on the 50-cent coin. It has featured on stamps. These include a blue 2-pence stamp from 1888 for the centenary of New South Wales, a 36-cent stamp in 1986, and a $1.35 stamp in 1994. The hats of the Australian Light Horse carry emu feather plumes. Early companies used the bird as a trademark, among them Webbenderfer Bros frame mouldings in 1891 and Mac Robertson Chocolate and Cocoa in 1893. Around six hundred gazetted places in Australia have emu in their names. Emu beer has been brewed in Western Australia since the early twentieth century. The quarterly journal of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union is called Emu: Austral Ornithology.

  Popular culture has adopted the bird too. The comedian Rod Hull performed with a wayward emu puppet for many years, and his son Toby revived it after Hull died in 1999. In 2019 Liberty Mutual launched an advertising campaign starring LiMu Emu, a computer-generated emu. An emu named Stompy at Alveus Sanctuary became known for giving hugs to guests. In 2025 the sanctuary rescued a former pet emu named Nolie. On a farm in south Florida, an emu named Emmanuel keeps photobombing the owner Taylor Blake's videos, which she has recorded since 2013. That gave rise to the phrase Emmanuel don't do it.

  Protection came late. John Gould's Handbook to the Birds of Australia, first published in 1865, mourned the emu's loss from Tasmania. He also suggested the species be given protected status. In the 1930s, the annual kill in Western Australia peaked at 57,000, and Queensland mounted culls because of crop damage. Bounties were still being paid in Western Australia in the 1960s. Wild emus have since been protected under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. The International Union for Conservation of Nature rates the species least concern, with a stable trend. The mainland population is thought to be higher now than before European settlement.

  Yet some local groups are at risk. Threats include the clearing and fragmentation of habitat, deliberate killing, collisions with vehicles, and predation of eggs and young. The New South Wales government lists the isolated emu population of the North Coast Bioregion and Port Stephens as endangered.

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