Tasmanian emu

The Tasmanian emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae diemenensis) is an extinct subspecies of emu. It was found in Tasmania, where it had become isolated during the Late Pleistocene. As opposed to the other insular emu taxa, the King Island emu and the Kangaroo Island emu, the population on Tasmania was sizable, meaning that there were no marked effects of small population size as in the other two isolates. The Tasmanian emu became extinct around 1865 according to the Australian Species Profile and Threats database. This was officially recorded in 1997 when changes to listings of nationally threatened species saw the Tasmanian emu added to the list of species presumed extinct. Information regarding the emu is reliant on 19th century documentary evidence and the limited number of emu specimens in museums. As a consequence one of the biggest challenges in researching the Tasmanian emu is the many names or spellings used to describe the emu. The early colonial accounts spell it ‘emue’, Reverend Robert Knopwood spelt it as ‘emew’. Other early accounts referred to it as a ‘cassowary’ and even an ‘ostrich’. George Augustus Robinson recorded two indigenous words for the Tasmanian emu. The Oyster Bay Indigenous language word for emu is Pun.nune.ner and the Brune Indigenous language word is Gonanner. The Tasmanian emu had not progressed to the point where it could be considered a distinct species and even its status as a distinct subspecies is not universally accepted, as it agreed with the mainland birds in measurements and the external characters used to distinguish it – a whitish instead of a black foreneck and throat and an unfeathered neck – apparently are also present, albeit rare, in some mainland birds. There are suggestions the bird was slightly smaller than the mainland emu, but in conflict, other evidence (including descriptions of Pleistocene remains) indicates that both are similar in size. There is much evidence to suggest Tasmanian emus were abundant in Van Diemen’s Land.