In 1932, farmers faced an invasion of 20,000 emus devastating their wheat crops in Western Australia. Their solution? Call in the military with machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. What followed was one of history's most absurd "wars"—a month-long campaign where trained soldiers with automatic weapons failed spectacularly against large, flightless birds. Despite multiple operations, strategic adjustments, and thousands of bullets fired, the military managed to kill perhaps 200 emus out of 20,000, ultimately withdrawing in defeat. The Great Emu War became an international embarrassment, proving that sometimes nature wins by simply refusing to play by human rules, and cementing the emu's place as the only bird species to defeat a military force in open combat.

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