The Great Emu War of 1932: Australia Lost to Birds

In 1932, the Australian army took machine guns to fight 20,000 emus, and lost. These were real soldiers with real machine guns on a real military operation.

The emus ran about fifty kilometers an hour and scattered every time they were shot at. After a month, the army withdrew. The emus kept the farmland.

Two clarifications on the truck. The truck that crashed was one farmers used to herd emus, and it crashed after hitting a bird (Britannica). Separately, the soldiers mounted a Lewis gun on a truck, but the ride was so rough, and the truck so unable to gain on the birds, that it never fired (contemporary newspaper accounts). On speed, emus can run about 50 km/h as a species; one truck driver at the time claimed they went far faster over rough ground.

Sources: Britannica, "Emu War"; ABC News (2022); National Geographic (2024), checked 2026-10-18.

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