The Emu War: Did Australia Really Lose?

This bird is famous for defeating an army. That is the internet's favourite war story. We pulled the records. The truth is funnier.

It was not a war. Nobody declared anything. The entire invading army was three men. One major. One sergeant. One gunner. Two machine guns. Against twenty thousand emus. That is six thousand birds per soldier.

The birds did not cooperate. They split into tiny groups and sprinted in every direction. One ornithologist wrote, completely straight, that the emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics.

A week in, the perfect ambush. A thousand emus walk to a dam. Point blank range. Twelve birds fall. Then the gun jams. The other nineteen thousand nine hundred and eighty eight leave.

Plan B: mount the gun on a truck. The ground is so rough the gunner cannot fire a single shot, and the truck cannot catch a bird that runs at fifty kilometres an hour.

After six days, two and a half thousand rounds fired, and somewhere between fifty and two hundred emus down. Parliament laughs. The guns are recalled.

Here is the part the meme never tells you. Australia stopped sending soldiers, and started writing cheques. A bounty per beak. In six months of 1934, fifty-seven thousand bounties were claimed. Fifty-seven thousand. The army managed nine hundred and eighty-six.

And then the actual winner arrived. A fence. Hundreds of kilometres of it.

Verdict: Part BS. There was no war, and the emus very much did not win it. But three soldiers with a jamming gun genuinely were out-run, out-manoeuvred and out-lasted by giant flightless birds, on camera, and that part is gloriously true.