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Emus Can’t Stand the Heat, Get Into the Water

January 21, 2014 by Meredith Mann 1 Comment

First, Australia gave us surfing swans. Now, the latest aquatic antics come courtesy of Emus. Clare tipped us off to this nugget: a mob of Emu wading into the waters of the Monkey Mia preserve. (Photo above by Katie Hughes/Monkey Mia Wildsights through ABC Rural)

These birds definitely have the right idea, as temperatures Down Under last week soared above 40 degrees Celsius (that’s over 100 degrees Farenheit, for the non-metric among us), postponing some Australian Open matches.

So the Emu decided to do as people do: go to the beach and cool off in the waves! According to Clare, “It is rare, but not unheard of, for Emus to venture into the water. They have very oily feathers, so [they] would not get saturated.”

Bonus benefit of taking a dip in the ocean: The birds had a chance to spend some quality time with Monkey Mia’s famous dolphins!

Written by Meredith Mann
The lowly Red-winged Blackbirds in suburban New York triggered Meredith Mann's interest in birds. Five years later, she's explored some of the the USA's coolest hotspots, from Plum Island in Massachusetts to the Magic Hedge in Chicago to the deserts of Fallon, Nevada. She recently migrated from the Windy City (where she proudly served as a Chicago Bird Collision Monitor, rescuing migrants from skyscrapers and sidewalks) to Philadelphia, where she plans to find new editing and writing gigs; keep up her cool-finds chronicle, Blog5B; and discover which cheesesteak really is the best. And she will accept any and all invitations to bird Cape May, NJ.