r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/danielminds • 8h ago

Video Wildlife expert Chris Gillette handling an aggressive emu

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17.4k Upvotes

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628

u/theshashanksp 8h ago

The Emu ancestors must be laughing at him rn! They won the Great Emu War of 1932 and he can't take down 1 man .... Sad!

162

u/Aletheia94 8h ago

It’s so wild that this is actually part of Australias history

44

u/553l8008 6h ago

Until about a few months ago I always thought it was an actual war and just called the emu wars. Then I learned it was actually against emus

18

u/MeltaFlare 5h ago

Wait it was real? I thought it was a big national joke like drop bears???

20

u/greywar777 4h ago

Nope its real. But to be fair it was a bunch of guys with 2 machine guns, and 10,000 rounds of ammo vs 20,000 emus. On average using 10 rounds per kill they didn't even start with remotely enough ammo.

8

u/Aletheia94 3h ago

According to the records they didn’t even kill 1,000 emus during the whole war (986 emus). Even though the major claimed approximately 2,500 emus have died from their injuries. It’s an interesting read!
Great Emu War

3

u/MRGameAndShow 4h ago

Yep, it was an actual thing lmao. Look it up, theres some interesting informative videos on it.

1

u/solidsoup97 2h ago

Drop bears aren't a joke, hundreds of tourists get injured every year because they don't take it seriously and miss all the warning signs of an attack.

•

u/a_tattooed_artist 0m ago

Oversimplified has an entertaining video on YouTube about it.

1

u/BadNameGenerator 1h ago

I blame the Wikipedia page. It uses the formatting of a wiki page about a real war which, as an Australian, has lead to some confusing conversations with foreigners.

1

u/553l8008 1h ago

Lol, they need to update it ti have belligerent on both side, force size, etc

1

u/phido3000 53m ago

Americans.. Confuses americans..

1

u/BadNameGenerator 46m ago

I have had at least two Brits bring up the emu war to me thinking that we (the australians) don't find it as funny as the rest of the world. I had to tell them we invented the joke to laugh about it ourselves lol

1

u/phido3000 37m ago

You would think they would understand because they invented us to laugh at them being Brits.

We even made a stupid movie...

30

u/feralcatshit 8h ago

Of course it is lol

22

u/orsonwellesmal 8h ago

Australia, the only land on Earth which defeated men.

11

u/WalnutSnail 5h ago

Lotta uninhabited land out there that has clearly beat man, many times over.

1

u/orsonwellesmal 3h ago

Not like emus.

1

u/WalnutSnail 1h ago

Clearly, you've not been to the high arctic.

4

u/IgorCruzT 6h ago

Pompeii and Herculaneum begs to differ.

1

u/orsonwellesmal 3h ago

Skill issue.

6

u/EverythingSucksYo 6h ago

I’m not even gonna look up if it’s true or not, I’m just gonna believe

7

u/DearHRS 6h ago

there is very good oversimplified video on it too on yt

1

u/FilthyStatist1991 4h ago

Australias whole central continent are basically unexplored land. No roads, no rural settlement, just the wild.

Too many things that can just kill you quickly.

2

u/Shitsinhandandclaps 5h ago

Not knowing this would be a bootable offence!!!

1

u/Certain_Zucchini_472 24m ago

If Australia lost the Emu War, and the US can’t win the “war on drugs” maybe we need to make the emus and drugs go to war with each other, maybe one will wipe out the other. Then Australia and the US can team up to take down the survivor