Episode 360: The Emu War
b"Apologies to patrons for redoing an old Patreon episode, but I have a cold and it's the holidays.\\n\\nThe noble emu:\\n\\n\\n\\nA baby emu (picture from this site, which has lots of good info about emus and lots more great pictures):\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\nI had a different episode planned to finish off the year, but I had lots of stuff to do for the holidays so I put it off, and then I came down with a cold. It\\u2019s just a cold, at least, and it's not too serious, but I decided to repurpose a Patreon episode from early 2020 instead of making a new episode, because I don't feel good. Apologies to my patrons for getting a rerun, but I did give the episode a brush-up and re-recorded it.\\nOur topic this week is a bird from Australia, the emu, but mostly we\\u2019re going to learn about the emu war that happened in 1932.\\nThe emu is a large, flightless bird almost as big as an ostrich, over 6 feet tall, or 2 meters. Like the ostrich, it can run really fast, over 30 miles per hour, or 50 km/hour. It\\u2019s only distantly related to the ostrich, though, and in fact it\\u2019s much more closely related to the tiny kiwi of New Zealand.\\nThe emu has long legs and a long neck, soft feathers that are gray and brown, and three toes on each foot. It also has small vestigial wings that are only about eight inches long, or 20 cm. The body feathers make the emu look shaggy, but the head and the upper portion of the neck are less heavily feathered so that it sort of looks like it\\u2019s wearing a fancy coat with a high collar. It also looks like it has a poofy wedge of a downward-pointing tail, but it actually doesn\\u2019t have much of a tail at all. What looks like a tail is mostly part of the body. The emu\\u2019s skeleton is built for running, which includes a modified pelvis and leg bones for the attachment of strong leg muscles.\\nIn winter, the female puffs out her feathers and struts around to attract a mate while making drumlike calls. Females sometimes fight each other by kicking, especially if a female approaches a male who already has a mate. The male builds a nest on the ground by placing dry grass, sticks, bark, and other plant materials on a flat, open area where he can see any predators that might approach.\\nThe female lays up to 15 green eggs that are around five inches long, or 13 cm. The male broods the eggs for the next eight weeks and doesn\\u2019t eat during that entire time, and only drinks whatever dew he can gather from the plants around the nest without leaving the nest. A male can lose a third of his weight while brooding. Meanwhile, the female often leaves and finds another mate, sometimes laying several clutches of eggs during the nesting season.\\nWhen the babies hatch, the father takes care of them for the next six or seven months, at which point they\\u2019re fully grown. While he\\u2019s in charge, the father won\\u2019t let any other emus near the chicks, even their mother. He teaches them to find food and if the babies feel threatened, they\\u2019ll run underneath him to hide. Baby emus have gray and white longitudinal stripes and are super cute.\\nThe emu eats plants and insects, and will sometimes travel long distances to find enough food and water. It can go a long time without eating and several days without drinking. It usually only drinks once a day but it will drink a whole lot of water during that one time.\\nSome populations of emu migrate to the coast after breeding season, where they can find more food and cooler weather. But in 1932 in western Australia, migrating emus didn\\u2019t find their usual food supplies. They found a whole lot of wheat fields cultivated by former soldiers, who had been given land after World War I. The Australian government had encouraged the soldiers to clear the land of native vegetation and grow lots of wheat, which they did. Then the emus showed up.\\nNaturally, without their usual food to eat, the emus sampled the wheat plants. And they found the plants yummy. Also,"