Emmanuel the emu, who caused hysteria online last week when his caretaker suggested he might have contracted the highly contagious bird flu, is OK.
It turns out Emmanuel became ill from stress, his caretaker, Taylor Blake, said in a lengthy Twitter update over the weekend.
Blake’s videos of Emmanuel went viral this year, getting millions of views on TikTok and boosting the emu’s celebrity.
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Blake announced this month that Emmanuel had fallen ill after a flock of wild Egyptian geese visited Knuckle Bump Farms, the hobby farm in South Florida where the emu lives.
Geese and other types of waterfowl are carriers of avian influenza, which they can pass through saliva, mucus and droppings.
