0:00 In November 1932, the Royal Australian Artillery was deployed for active combat inside Australia—their enemy was a flightless bird.0:09 It sounds like a joke, right?0:11 Almost as unbelievable as the man-bats and Moon Unicorns we talked about in episode 71.0:17 But here's the thing—unlike that brilliant newspaper hoax, every single detail of the Great Emu War is devastatingly, hilariously true.0:26 So here's the setup.0:27 It's post-World War One.0:29 Australia rewarded its veterans with plots of land to farm out in Western Australia.0:35 The problem was, this land was marginal at best.0:38 And then the Great Depression hit.0:41 These men, who had survived the trenches of Europe, were now facing total economic ruin.0:47 And just when they thought it couldn't get any worse...0:50 the emus arrived.0:52 We're not talking about a few birds pecking at scraps.0:55 We're talking about a migration of twenty-thousand emus.0:59 Twenty.1:00 Thousand.1:00 They're moving inland after their breeding season, looking for water, and they stumble upon this new, irrigated farmland.1:09 To them, it's not a farm—it's the biggest, most glorious buffet they have ever seen.1:15 They're tearing down fences, flattening crops, and eating the farmers into bankruptcy.1:21 The farmers, many of them ex-soldiers, appeal to the government.1:25 And the Minister of Defence, Sir George Pearce, himself a veteran, has an idea.1:31 A truly terrible idea.1:32 He agrees to send in the military.1:34 Specifically, Major G.P.W.1:36 Meredith, two soldiers under his command, and two Lewis machine guns with ten thousand rounds of ammunition.1:44 The plan?1:44 The army would kill the birds, and the farmers would get the feathers.1:49 Everybody wins.1:50 Except, of course, the emus.1:52 That was the plan, anyway.1:54 What happened next is one of the most profound military humiliations of the 20th century.2:00 Major Meredith and his men roll up, find a flock of about fifty emus, and set up an ambush.2:06 The guns open fire.2:08 And the emus...2:09 just run.2:09 Not in one panicked mob.2:11 No, they instantly split into small groups and scatter in every direction, making them impossible targets.2:18 After a whole day, the army had fired hundreds of rounds and killed maybe a dozen birds.2:25 The rest just vanished into the bush.2:27 So, okay.2:28 Phase two.2:28 They decide they need to be more mobile.2:31 Someone has the brilliant idea to mount one of the Lewis guns on the back of a truck.2:37 This is where it goes from military operation to pure slapstick comedy.2:42 They find another flock and the truck gives chase.2:46 But the ground is so rough, the gunner can't get a steady aim.2:50 The truck can't keep up with the emus, which can hit speeds of thirty miles an hour.2:56 At one point the truck literally crashes through a farmer’s fence trying to follow them.3:02 The emus are completely unfazed.3:04 This is the part that gets me.3:06 Where have we seen this before?3:08 A technologically superior, conventional force getting absolutely dismantled by a non-conventional opponent that knows the terrain.3:17 The Australian army had machine guns.3:20 The emus had speed, local knowledge, and what Major Meredith himself described with grudging admiration as a kind of guerilla tactic.3:29 He reported that each flock had a leader, a big, six-foot-tall bird that would stand watch while the others fed, ready to give the alarm.3:39 They weren't fighting a pest.3:41 They were fighting an organized, decentralized, and deeply resilient force.3:46 They were fighting an enemy that refused to fight on the army's terms.3:51 After a month of this farce, the military quietly withdrew.3:55 The press had a field day.3:57 One politician in the Australian parliament asked if they'd be awarding a medal to the emus for their victory.4:04 The official numbers are just...4:06 staggering.4:07 They used nearly ten thousand rounds of ammunition to kill fewer than a thousand birds.4:13 That's more than TEN bullets for every confirmed kill.4:17 It was a categorical failure.4:19 The government learned its lesson.4:21 Future requests for military intervention were denied.4:25 Instead, they put a bounty on the emus, which proved far more effective over the long run.4:31 But the "war" itself stands as this perfect, absurd monument.4:36 It’s a story about what happens when you bring a machine gun to a problem that requires a totally different kind of thinking.4:44 The army saw a simple target.4:46 What they faced was something else entirely—a living part of the landscape that was faster, smarter, and ultimately tougher than they ever imagined.
