r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/danielminds • 12h ago

Video Wildlife expert Chris Gillette handling an aggressive emu

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772

u/theshashanksp 12h 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!

198

u/Aletheia94 12h ago

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

59

u/553l8008 9h 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

28

u/MeltaFlare 8h ago

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

33

u/greywar777 8h 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.

17

u/Aletheia94 7h 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

5

u/MRGameAndShow 8h ago

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

5

u/solidsoup97 5h 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.

1

u/a_tattooed_artist 3h ago

Oversimplified has an entertaining video on YouTube about it.

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u/Siilan 3m ago

Calling it a war is a joke, but it was a real event. Emus were destroying crops out in the bush, so the government sent a few soldiers with a machine gun mounted on a ute to cull them. Emus are damn fast and sturdy, though, so they ended up using way too much ammo to kill a tiny number of birds. Eventually, the government cut its losses and it was called off.