Aha Lantern: the great emu war
In 1932, the Australian army took machine guns to fight 20,000 emus - and lost. Real soldiers, real machine guns, a real military operation. The emus ran fifty kilometers an hour, scattered every time they were shot at, and outran a truck-mounted gun. After a month, the army withdrew. The emus kept the farmland. The true story of the Great Emu War.
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Two clarifications on the truck. (1) The truck that crashed was one farmers used to herd emus - it crashed after hitting a bird (Britannica). (2) 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).
Series: Sounds Fake
