Thread by @DavidZabinsky

On one side?

You had the best of Australia's military, hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammo, and the most powerful machine guns in the world.

On the other side?

You had...Emus.

Yep. Emus.

Grab your popcorn for the story on Australia's hard-to-believe "Great Emu War"👇:

We start in 1918.

The Great War (later known, of course, as World War I) had ended, and hundreds of thousands of Australian soldiers were returning home.

And whilst this was great news for everyone, the Australian Government did, however, find themselves in a strange and pressing predicament:

How the hell would they find over 300,000 men meaningful jobs – and things to do – in such a short amount of time?!

The answer?

Give them land...much of which was in the nearly inhospitable plains of Western Australia.

Shit tons of it.

Just how much is a shit ton?

Well, by 1920, the government had purchased 90,000 hectares of land, which was then sold to veterans at massive discounts with flexible payment terms.

From there?

The new land-owners would have work AND something to do:

Farm wheat and rear sheep.

Great idea, no?

First, it was a way to recognize the soldiers’ sacrifices abroad during the war.

Second, since these folks would use the land to farm, it was a way to stimulate the Australian economy AND keep unemployment down.

A win-win for all, no doubt...

Or so it seemed.

You see, the parts of Western Australia in which many of these veterans had settled were up until that point, nearly entirely uninhabited…

Uninhabited, that is...except for Emus.

And these Emus?

Well, let’s just say they weren’t too hot on the idea of having new neighbors.

Instead of bringing over homemade apple pie to the humans next door, they welcomed them by gnawing their wheat crops down to the very last stub.

In fact, Emus had caused such a nuisance to thousands of farmers in the area, that by 1922, they were no longer considered a protected species, but instead:

Vermin.

By 1932, a decade later, there were some 20,000 (!!!) Emus foraging throughout Western Australia, rendering the farmers’ crops dead and their land useless.

So what was the solution to fend off these pestering birds once and for all?

...

War.

Seriously.

A real war.

Against the Emus.

With support from the Australian Minister of Defense, Major G.P.W. Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery led a group towards Western Australia in November of 1932 with 10,000 rounds of ammo...

And a mission to kill.

The soldiers?

They wielded the famous WWI-era machine gun: the Lewis gun.

And so you think: it'd be a short war…right?

You’d think a bunch of trained fighters with high-end firepower could easily take out 20,000 or so long-necked birds that can’t even fly…right?

Ha.

Wrong.

From November 2nd to November 8th, Major Meredith and his men fired 2,500 rounds of ammunition towards thousands and thousands of Emus.

And from those 2,500 rounds…can you guess how many Emus had been killed?

200.

That’s 12.5 bullets for every Emu for those counting at home.

And so you ask:

How the bloody hell could a bunch of goofy, awkward birds evade death so easily?

Were the Australians shooting blind-folded?

Were their bullets made of…I don’t know…pillows?

But no…it wasn’t that the Australians had bad shots…or that they were poorly armed.

Instead, it was that the Emus just plain outsmarted them.

Period.

Rather than flocking around in big packs like they normally would, the Emus realized…well, how guns worked.

So instead?

They split up into countless small packs that’d force the Australians to spend more time searching for birds than they would spend actually mowing them down.

One ornithologist commented:

"The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic."

But wait: it gets better.

Major Meredith said of his enemy:

"Each pack seems to have its leader now – a big black plumed bird which stands fully six feet high and keeps watch while his mates carry out their work of destruction and warns them of our approach."

Imagine!

These badass Emus not only split up into groups to avoid ruthless machine gun fire, but they also RUBBED IT IN THE AUSTRALIANS’ FACES by all the while absolutely DESTROYING nearby crops in the process.

Major Meredith?

He rationalized his (lack of) performance by praising the opposition further:

"If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face ANY army in the world!"

...

We're talking about a bunch of f***-ing Emus man!

By December 10th…only 32 days after the campaign began, Major Meredith was recalled.

The Great Emu War was over as soon as it started.

Now looking back, these military failures may be pretty damn hysterical…but remember:

There were farmers whose crops were being destroyed!

And with the military now long gone from Western Australia, what’d these beleaguered farmers do?

Well, they took matters into their own hands.

Not only did the Australian Government give loads…and I mean LOADS of ammo to the farmers for free, but they also rewarded them for every Emu carcass.

An Emu bounty…I shit you not.

So by the end of 1934, do you know how many Emus the farmers had killed on their own?

57,034.

Today, nearly 90 years after the Great Emu War, Emus are back on Australia's "protected species" list.

However…IF a farmer has a gun license and IF an Emu enters his or her property, salivating over a wheat crop or two, the farmer is allowed to…well, blow the bird away.

But these days?

Organized Emu warfare in Australia is no more.

Today, there are between 625,000 and 725,000 Emus in Australia…and their impact on the country’s wheat farmers seems all but negligent:

The Aussies are slated to export 26 million metric tons of wheat in 2022.

So all of this begs the question:

Were Major Meredith’s all-out war…and government bounties…really the right approach in the 1930s?

Or perhaps - in the heat of it all - was it just a little bit...

Over Emu-tional?

Enjoy this thread? Learn something new today?

Follow me @DavidZabinsky for more rarely-told stories like this one.

Think this has been the only war humans have waged on an animal species?

Think again.

Check out the thread below, where the place of warfare was the Galápagos Islands, and the enemy was…a bunch of goats.

https://twitter.com/DavidZabinsky/status/1475449663528398848?s=20

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Other reads on the Great Emu War:

republicworld.com/world-news/aus…

blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies…