Australia’s Great Emu War Defeat

The Great Emu War of 1932 proves that Australia literally lost a military operation to birds.

After World War One, veterans were given farmland, but twenty thousand

emus invaded their crops. The government deployed soldiers with machine guns to handle it.

Sounds easy, right? Wrong. The emus were too fast,

scattered when shot at, and could survive multiple bullets. After weeks of embarrassing

failure and wasted ammunition, the military withdrew in defeat. The emus kept destroying

crops. Australia's solution? They gave up on warfare and just paid farmers bounties

instead. Sometimes the best military strategy is admitting you can't outsmart a