Wild Emus at The Lilly Pilly Tree

[briefvisit]

‘Silly question: what are the things hanging from Offsider's sides? Are they tiny wings?’



I like answering this question.



They are wings, but vestigial wings. ‘Vestige’ means ‘left over.’



So, are emus dinosaurs? Discoveries of certain fossils in Germany in the 1800’s -- archaeopteryx -- showed that some dinosaurs had feathers. To say that an emu is a dinosaur is pretty close to correct.



But it gets better. There is a tiny vestigial claw under an emu’s wing. Archaeopteryx had the same thing. And a living bird called the ‘hoatzin’ still has a working claw on its wing. Here it is:



https://www.google.com/search?q=you...ate=ive&vld=cid:f630cf43,vid:87_shPJxdns,st:0



So, was the emu’s wing originally the little grabby forearm that a T Rex has? I’ll let you do some research on that.



SE

 

[AntiqueB]

You just blew my mind. I had a concept of emus being like smaller ostriches, but ostriches have actual wings, not vestigial ones. They are apparently very different birds.

Can emus move their wings, or do they just hang there? I never noticed them on the other pictures you've posted.

 

[RoyalChick]

‘Silly question: what are the things hanging from Offsider's sides? Are they tiny wings?’



I like answering this question.



They are wings, but vestigial wings. ‘Vestige’ means ‘left over.’



So, are emus dinosaurs? Discoveries of certain fossils in Germany in the 1800’s -- archaeopteryx -- showed that some dinosaurs had feathers. To say that an emu is a dinosaur is pretty close to correct.



But it gets better. There is a tiny vestigial claw under an emu’s wing. Archaeopteryx had the same thing. And a living bird called the ‘hoatzin’ still has a working claw on its wing. Here it is:



https://www.google.com/search?q=you...ate=ive&vld=cid:f630cf43,vid:87_shPJxdns,st:0



So, was the emu’s wing originally the little grabby forearm that a T Rex has? I’ll let you do some research on that.



SE

Wow. So interesting. I had no idea!
I have seen ostriches use their wings to display and it is an impressive sight. I too assumed Emu did the same.
Thank you for this thread - I am a lurker and follow along!

 

[briefvisit]

'but ostriches have actual wings, not vestigial ones' Well, no -- 'cause ostriches can't fly, which surely makes their wings vestigial.

 

[briefvisit]

'You just blew my mind.'



Oh, there is a lot of great stuff to learn yet. Look up the term 'megafauna.' Australia was a very megafauna-ey place! (And I must write here as a Darwinist. There is not getting around that.)







Why are 25% of the world's kangaroos native to Papua New Guinea? Because Papua New Guinea was once attached to Australia.



Let’s bring a new word into play: liminal



It means ‘overlapping.’ So, in all history, we can roughly identify three sections. One is the present. One is the past that we know at least a little about. And the third is the past that we don’t know about.



There are five ratite species, and a number of sub-species. But one of the emu sub-species is extinct and known only from a single skin in a European museum.



This single skin puts us ‘in the liminal’: we aren’t going to observe those pygmy emus . . . ‘cause they’re extinct. But we are pretty sure they existed.



The coelacanth is another good example of ‘liminal’:

‘Coelacanths are known from the fossil record dating back over 360 million years, with a peak in abundance about 240 million years ago. Before 1938 they were believed to have become extinct approximately 80 million years ago, when they disappeared from the fossil record.’



They stopped being extinct when a specimen was hauled up in a fishing net – that is, they were already well known from fossils, but were assumed to have died out. (I remember reading about these as a teenager.)



So, is there an ‘emu liminal’? Oh, yeh!

 

[briefvisit]

Ok. The ball is in your court. Past and present and dinosaur and bird are overlapping categories. There is good information about some giant flightless birds that used to be in my backyard millions of years before I got here.

SE

 

[briefvisit]

Emus can waggle their little wing -- or at least move them. I think that ostriches and rheas can help themselves change direction while running by stickin' a wing out, but I don't know if emus have enough wing to help in this respect.

I do note that emus sort of stick their wings out from their bodies on really hot days (and walk around with their beaks open).

 

[briefvisit]

'I never noticed them on the other pictures you've posted.'

Quite understandable. If the angle is one way, you can see the tiny wing(s) sticking out in the silhouette. But from lots of angles -- as the wing is camouflaged against the body -- you just don't notice it!

 

[briefvisit]

There is autumn in the dawn air.

 

[AntiqueB]

Do you often see emus like LC and Offsider who seemingly pair up, but do not produce chicks?