Reversing revisited

In my last post, I talked about the ability to walk backwards, with the following conclusions: kangaroos – no ability to walk backwards; emus – ability to walk backwards unverified. Apparently, in the book that I mentioned (“Emus can’t walk backwards: Another round of dubious pub facts”) I have been told that the author describes experiments done in Australia to demonstrate that emus can, in fact, walk backwards. I’d be interested to read it, learn the evidence for myself, and also to know whether it describes the origin of this fable. (Really, emus are not all that popular an animal to discuss in everyday conversation! So who started the idea that they can only walk forwards?)

Anyways, I’ll see if I can check it out from the library. This is good - this could save me a long time sitting in front of the emu exhibit at the zoo, waiting for one of them to back up.