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100 free Emu trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The emu is Australia's tallest bird and the second-tallest in the world, and this quiz covers the animal and its strange domestic life: males that sit on the eggs for eight weeks without eating, drinking or defecating and lose a third of their weight; hens that boom like drums, fight over mates and wander off to lay in other nests; dark green eggs, feathers with two shafts, three-toed feet, a 48 km/h sprint and a jumping kick aimed at dingoes. It also covers the emu in Australian life: the Dutch sailors who saw it first in 1696, the 'New Holland cassowary' of 1789, the three island subspecies wiped out after settlement, the Great Emu War of 1932 in which the army's Lewis guns lost to 20,000 birds, the emu in the sky in Aboriginal astronomy, the coat of arms and 50-cent coin, the Light Horse plumes, Rod Hull's puppet, and the modern industry in oil, leather and meat. Easy questions ask which country and how many toes; hard ones want incubation days, stride lengths and ammunition counts. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the emu and the Emu War, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Our Ostrich and Australian Animals quizzes go wider.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Among the world's birds, where does the emu rank in height?
Second, after the ostrich
Only the two ostrich species stand taller; the emu is the sole living member of its genus, Dromaius.
Q 02How tall can an emu grow?
Up to 1.9 m
That makes it the second-tallest bird in the world; adults weigh anywhere from 18 to 60 kg.
Q 03How fast can an emu sprint?
48 km/h
At full gallop a stride can stretch to 275 cm, thanks to hugely developed leg muscles.
Q 04Which parent incubates emu eggs?
The male
He hardly eats or drinks for eight weeks and loses about a third of his weight on the nest.
Q 05Which three insular subspecies of emu became extinct after European settlement?
Tasmanian, Kangaroo Island and King Island
The insular dwarf emus were gone by the 1800s; the mainland bird remains common, at 630,000 to 725,000 in 2009.
Q 06The name 'emu' is thought to come from an Arabic word for what, via Portuguese explorers?
Large bird
Another theory points to the Portuguese 'ema', a large bird like an ostrich or crane.
Q 07Europeans first reported seeing emus in 1696 in which part of the continent?
The west
Dutch captain Willem de Vlamingh was searching for survivors of a ship missing two years earlier.
Q 08Under what name was the emu first described in Arthur Phillip's 1789 Voyage to Botany Bay?
The New Holland cassowary
The description noted it lacked the cassowary's helmet and had wings 'totally useless for flight'.
Q 09The genus name Dromaius comes from a Greek word meaning what?
Racer
So Dromaius novaehollandiae reads roughly as 'fast-footed New Hollander'; John Latham named it in 1790.
Q 10The emu's closest relatives are which birds?
Cassowaries
A 2014 DNA study gave the emu its own family, Dromaiidae, within a new order Casuariiformes shared with the cassowaries.
Q 11The Tasmanian emu became extinct around which year?
1865
The two other island dwarf emus vanished even sooner after Europeans arrived, and the mainland bird remains common.
Q 12How many toes does an emu have on each foot?
Three
The toe and claw together run 15 cm, and the claws are the bird's main weapon in a fight.
Q 13Emus are unique among birds in that a calf muscle, the gastrocnemius, has how many bellies?
Four
Most birds have three; the emu's leg muscles weigh as much, proportionally, as a flying bird's flight muscles.
Q 14What is unusual about the structure of an emu feather?
Q 21Which sex of emu does most of the booming?
The hens
The boom announces territory and threatens rivals; the female's courtship calls have been compared to drum beats.
Q 22Besides small stones for grinding food, emus are known to eat what puzzling substance?
Charcoal
The reason is unclear; the grinding stones themselves can weigh 45 grams each.
Q 23How do emus deal with a fence in their way when raiding wheat and fruit crops?
They climb over it, even if it is high
That knack is part of why the 1932 Emu War was fought and lost.
Two shafts emerge from a single base
The double rachis gives a shaggy look; black tips absorb sun while the inner plumage insulates the skin.
Q 15An emu's wings are vestigial, but each has what at its tip?
A small claw
The wing chord is only about 20 cm, but emus still flap them when running, perhaps for balance.
Q 16What colour is the skin of an emu's neck, showing through its sparse feathers?
Pale blue
Plumage varies with habitat: rufous on red soils, darker in damp country.
Q 17What protects an emu's eyes from dust in windy country?
Translucent nictitating membranes
The secondary eyelids sweep horizontally across the eye like visors.
Q 18Emus have a tracheal pouch that becomes more prominent when?
During the mating season
It is more than 30 cm long and thin-walled, and it powers the booming calls.
Q 19In the west of the continent, emu movements follow a seasonal pattern of what?
North in summer, south in winter
On the east coast their wanderings look random; agriculture and stock water have actually spread them into arid areas.
Q 20How long does an emu sleep in a 24-hour period?
About seven hours
It wakes about every ninety minutes to feed or defecate, then folds its neck into an S and sinks back down like a small mound.
Q 24Which sex of emu is heavier during the breeding season?
The hen, at 45 to 58 kg
Hens are also noticeably wider across the rump, and fights among them for a mate are common.
Q 25What colour are emu eggs?
Green
They darken during incubation, but an egg that never hatches bleaches white in the sun.
Q 26While incubating, an emu father does what about ten times a day?
Turns the eggs
Otherwise he does not eat, drink or defecate, surviving on body fat and any morning dew he can reach.
Q 27How much of his weight does a male emu lose over the eight-week incubation?
About a third
He develops a bare brood patch to keep the eggs warm and stops sitting only just before they hatch.
Q 28How long is the emu's incubation period?
56 days
Eggs laid days apart still hatch within two days of each other, since later eggs sit at higher temperatures.
Q 29Once the male starts brooding, what does the hen usually do?
Wanders off and may pair with other males
Infidelity is the norm: up to half the chicks in a brood may not be the sitting male's, and emus also dump eggs in each other's nests.
Q 30Which animal is the emu's main predator in modern Australia?
The dingo
The emu answers by leaping and kicking or stamping on the dingo as it comes down, keeping its neck out of reach.