The Emu War
How the Australian military was defeated by birds.
2 min read · from UNINTENDED by Mayank Mehta
In 1932, the farmers of Western Australia were desperate. The Great Depression had already pushed them to the brink, and now a new threat was marching toward their wheat fields: emus. Roughly twenty thousand of the large, flightless birds were migrating from the interior toward the coast, and the wheat fields planted by former soldiers on government land grants lay directly in their path.
The farmers appealed to the government for help. The government, in a decision that would soon become legendary for all the wrong reasons, sent the military. A detachment of soldiers from the Royal Australian Artillery arrived in the Campion district armed with two Lewis machine guns and ten thousand rounds of ammunition. The plan was straightforward: shoot the emus.
The emus had other plans.
The birds, it turned out, were fast, unpredictable, and remarkably difficult to hit. They ran at speeds of up to thirty miles per hour and scattered at the first sound of gunfire, breaking into small groups that dispersed across the landscape. The machine guns, designed for stationary targets and trench warfare, were almost useless against an enemy that wouldn't stand still.
After several days of effort, the soldiers had expended thousands of rounds and killed a small fraction of the emu population. The army withdrew, regrouped, and tried again. The results were no better. One military commander reportedly compared the emus to Zulu warriors, noting their ability to absorb punishment and keep moving. The birds seemed to have developed an informal command structure, with scouts posted to warn the flock of approaching soldiers.
By December, the operation was abandoned. The military had fired nearly ten thousand rounds and killed perhaps a thousand emus. The other nineteen thousand continued their advance on the wheat fields.
The government eventually turned to a bounty system, which proved more effective, and to the construction of thousands of miles of fencing, which proved more effective still. But the brief, inglorious war between the Australian army and the emu population became one of the most celebrated military failures in history, a reminder that nature isn't impressed by firepower and that the most formidable enemy is sometimes the one you didn't take seriously.