Why is the emu on the coat of arms?

The emu appears on the Australian coat of arms because, like the kangaroo on the opposite side of the shield, it is a native animal said to be unable to walk backwards. The pairing of the two animals symbolises a country that never travels backwards, and both species are found nowhere else in the world in the wild.

The emu stands on the right side of the shield (the viewer's left) as one of the two heraldic supporters. The current coat of arms, granted by King George V on 19 September 1912, paired the two animals in the same configuration as the earlier 1908 version, and earlier still on military and unofficial colonial badges. Heraldic supporters in the British tradition usually hold the shield upright, and the kangaroo and emu fulfil that role on the federal coat of arms.

The emu is the second-largest living bird in the world after the ostrich, standing up to two metres tall and weighing up to 60 kilograms. It is flightless, fast on the ground (up to 50 kilometres an hour), and lives across most of mainland Australia in dry inland country, woodlands, and near water. Emus are not found in Tasmania, where a separate dwarf species was driven to extinction by colonial hunting in the early nineteenth century.

The emu also features on the Australian fifty-cent coin (alongside the kangaroo and the full coat of arms), on the rank insignia of warrant officers in the Australian Defence Force, and on the labels of countless Australian businesses, from breweries to airlines. The Great Emu War of 1932, in which the army was sent to cull emus damaging Western Australian wheat crops and was famously embarrassed by the birds, has become a well-loved piece of Australian folklore.