Australia once declared war on birds — and lost

In 1932, the Australian government deployed soldiers armed with Lewis guns — actual military machine guns — to fight emus. Thousands of the large, flightless birds were destroying wheat crops across Western Australia, and desperate farmers demanded action. The military sent in troops expecting a quick victory.

It did not go as planned. The emus proved surprisingly tactical, splitting into small groups and scattering when fired upon. The birds could absorb multiple bullets and keep running at 30 miles per hour. After weeks of effort and thousands of rounds of ammunition, the soldiers had killed only a fraction of the emu population. The operation was such an embarrassment that it was debated in Australia's House of Representatives, and the military withdrew.

The episode, now called the Great Emu War, became one of history's strangest military campaigns. Australia eventually solved the emu problem not with guns, but with something far simpler: bounty payments to farmers. By 1934, the bounty system had proven far more effective than the army ever was.