Hi! Where are you getting the info for the emu dads (about how the victor will 'adopt' the loser's kids?) I googled it and couldn't find any papers on that observation.
excellent question and I have no idea since that damned emu post is many years old!
Most of my memories associated with it are ‘oh fuck that post again, didn’t I block that? oh no I am on a new computer HELP XKIT SAVE ME’.
However, I do have one memory which probably involves making it in the first place, and that is a vague irritation at trying to find photos of emus with multi-aged babies, which is, really, the only kind of emu family group I’ve ever seen in real life outside of very restricted zoo enclosures.
If I were to dig through my memory to work out where those anecdotes came from that formed that post?
My first impression is associated with my zoo volunteer work as a kid/teen, at Adelaide and Monarto zoos (Adelaide = in the city of Adelaide, Monarto = an open-range zoo in South Australia a couple of hours’ drive out from the state capital). Adelaide always had a few emus but Monarto had some that were far more free-range - not in enclosures but just wandering the vast expanses of their grounds, just protected by the perimeter fences.
This was the nineties. I don’t think, now you mention it, that I ever saw any published articles. I wouldn’t have: I hadn’t graduated high school, and hardly anyone was on the internet. I was just learning the patter of ‘what we tell visitors about these guys, and these, and these’ - so, a sort of compost of anecdotes and fact and the individual history of any animal you could recognise and every older guide’s best stories. Not the best scientific peer-reviewed attested resources, in retrospect; except that, though it’s technically anecdotal and focussed around story-telling, it’s anecdotes by people who are scientifically trained and make observation and care of wildlife their life’s work.And, you know, I was in and out of that for ten years and saw a whole bunch of male emus with a whole bunch of differently aged babies at their feet. And saw the same on several family camping holidays in five or six different locations (with very diverse distances and terrains and environments to that around Monarto) and saw the same behaviours.
(And I also FEEL like I’ve seen some Attenborough-style documentary that at least includes it, but I’m probably conflating in my memory.)
but dammit you’re right. Now I want to see someone STUDYING it and making it known.
this is a fact I’ve known and observed since childhood. now give me my data.
