There's a really cute but very slightly rude Emu bird named Emmanuel.
He's become a celebrity online after constantly
interrupting his owners videos, let's watch.
>> This is a, Emmanuel do not do it,
Emmanuel don't do it, Emmanuel don't do it.
I'm trying to educate people right now, okay?
Can you just stop.
Emmanuel every time ,Emmanuel don't do it, Emmanuel don't do it.
Emmanuel don't choose violence today, please.
Every day we go through this, gosh, it's never ending.
Our black swan, actually that may be him right over there.
Emmanuel don't do it, Emmanuel, you know what do it.
>> The whole time I'm watching this video,
I'm thinking that Emmanuel reminds me a lot of like Joe Manchin ruining
legislation every time we get close to getting something done.
So that's Taylor Blake, she's a TikTok and animal enthusiast.
She makes informational videos about different creatures.
She likes to spread important knowledge about different species and
she's made several TikToks about Emmanuel Todd Lopez.
It's a five foot eight emu bird, who's gone viral just for
interrupting his mother.
She lives on a farm with cows, with donkeys and another emu named Ellen,
in which Emmanuel apparently has some beef with.
And in order to address the controversy, the Washington post reached out to
Emmanuel in an interview but he denied to comment, let's watch.
>> Hey, the Washington Post is on the phone.
Excuse, excuse me sir, the Washington Post is on the phone.
Do you have any?
They would like you to make a comment.
The Washington Post would like you to make a comment.
Emmanuel, can you make a comment?
Emmanuel, you're embarrassing me, this is a really big deal come on.
Is there anything you'd like to say?
Is there anything that you would like to say?
>> Hi Emmanuel.
>> Did you hear that?
And say thank you for the love?
Hello kiss.
>> I know we said we're gonna talk about fun stuff and I don't wanna make this sad.
But again, Joe Manchin has nothing to say to defend themselves to the press whenever
they're interrogated by the press.
But Taylor Blake, Emmanuel's owner said of that interaction with the Washington Post,
that Emmanuel is just kinda a down to earth guy,
I don't really think he cares about being famous.
And in all fairness to Emmanuel, some other animals on the farm have taken
after his rude behavior by continuing the trend, let's watch that.
>> Princess is about to come into the frame again, I can't catch a break today,
guys, I've been trying to film this forever.
Ellen, Ellen, Ellen.
No, Regina get up.
>> Yeah, that's Kirsten Sinema taking over following Machin footsteps.
I'm sorry that I keep making this about politics, I really can't help but
carry on with that analogy.
Jake, what do you think of Emmanuel?
>> Well, the problem is that the country likes Emmanuel, which is very
different than what the country thinks of Joe Manchin, [LAUGH] okay.
So, look it's a feel good story and
I liked it Emmanuel largely listens to her and
anyone who's ever been a kid,
you feel Emmanuel situation, right?
You really wanted touch that thing or poke it or whatever it is, right?
And they're telling you, Emmanuel don't do it, don't do it Emanuel, don't do it.
And then so in the final video where we showed the very end of it,
where she's like, just do it, Emmanuel was like, yes, bam [LAUGH].
She says later in that video, are you happy now?
Are you happy? And
Emmanuel was like, and like hitting the camera, as happy as he could possibly be.
if you notice Ellen, now that's a better analogy to Kirsten Sinema.
She just goes and does it with flair instantly, doesn't listen to anyone.
I don't know if she twirled as she picked it as Sinema did in the minimum wage vote.
But anyways, so look, Blake, Taylor or
Taylor Blake is a really cool story.
She went to go help her grandparents with the farm because they were struggling
with the farm and she moved to South Florida with her girlfriend by the way,
and she says we live in dark times,
but this is bringing a little bit of light into the world.
So, I like that it is and that's absolutely true, you keep going,
we appreciate it.
And she's thinking of doing merch now that says,
Emmanuel don't do it, but I think that she should do the shirt that says,
Emmanuel fine do it [LAUGH], that's the one I want.
>> I think she should sell both and just see which one sells more.
After I was watching these videos I was reminded, that in Australia,
have you heard of this, how they went to war with the emus after World War 2?
There was a proper war in Australia where a bunch of the veterans from
World War 2 were encouraged to start farming.
And they started farming in this part of Western Australia where the emus
apparently migrated to and there were 20,000 emus that were just running a muck.
And there were a ton of public complaints about this, they were like they're
destroying our crops, they're a nuisance, these creatures are insane.
And then the defense minister who had just gotten back from World War 2 encouraged
the veterans to use machine guns against the emus, to try and
fight a war against the emus.
And it lasted a month from November 2nd to December 10th in 1932 and
they lost, the Australians lost their war against the emus.
>> My God, really?
I never knew that, so how did they lose?
>> I think they just couldn't kill them.
There was a really interesting quote from someone who is a bird scientist,
they said the machine gunners dreams of point blank fire into
serried masses of emus were soon dissipated.
The emu command had evidently ordered guerilla tactics and
its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units and
made use of the military equipment uneconomic.
A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew
from the combat area after about a month.
>> That's amazing, so now that we're into Australia and amazing facts about animals
in Australia, that allows me to get into this thing that I am fascinated by and
never had the opportunity to talk about before on the show.
It turns out the original hunter gatherer homo sapiens that landed in Australia,
so our ancestors, killed off what's called megafauna,
which are very large animals that were on the island and
had lived there probably millions of years.
And we came in there and they were like, look they're large and
slow, we can kill them all and we did.
So there used to be 450kg kangaroos,
2000kg wild bats, seven meter long lizards,
180kg flightless birds, 130kg marsupial lions,
car sized tortoises, car sized tortoises.
And so Australia was this amazing island with giant animals
all over it and the humans came in and decimated them,
they're all extinct, we killed them all.
So which goes back to don't mess at emus because
apparently that's the one thing we can't get rid of,
whether it's a farm down in South Florida or
Australia, emus are large and in charge.
>> Yeah, they're able to get rid of everything else except for these guys,
that's really interesting.
I think there's another niche point that I like to make about ancient
humans hunting megafauna, right?
Like wooly mammoths, there's a theory that Adam Smith had, right?
People talk about Adam Smith is like the father of capitalism and there was a story
about human beings hunting the wooly mammoths because they're so huge.
One person could not take down a mammoth, but they all hunted together and
they cooperated and they had elaborate plans to go and
chase the wooly mammoths off of cliffs so they could kill them and then eat them.
And way before Charles Darwin wrote about his theory of evolution,
Adam Smith wrote that he believed human beings evolved to become the dominant
species on the planet because they could collaborate and
work together and accomplish more than they could separately.
And so them hunting megafauna is like the big example that he uses for that,
because once we started eating a lot of meat,
our brains grew to be much bigger and it led to us being the dominant species.
So the secret is not individualism but people working together,
I think that's beautiful.
>> It is and of all people that comes from Adam Smith.
Yeah and he was brilliant and when I was a kid I thought the wooly mammoths were
around at the time of the dinosaurs, that's not at all true.
Turns out that all these megafauna of these giant
animals roamed the earth until about 45,000 years ago.
And and even more recent for some of them and that's when we killed them all and
got larger brains and then killed more of them and
then became the very dangerous species that we are now.
>> Yes.