That’s a ñandu.

I hadn’t realized they were around here. When I saw one, I thought, “Is that an emu? Don’t they only live in Australia?” It turns out it’s a ñandu — a distant relative of the emu — that calls Patagonia home.

This resemblance is part of an ancient Gondwanan legacy. Gondwana was an enormous supercontinent that existed millions of years ago and included what are now South America, Africa, Australia, India, and Antarctica. As it broke apart, species evolved independently, yet some echoes of that shared past still show up today. For example, Chile is home to the monito del monte, a small marsupial endemic to this region.