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Hey brain Stuff. I'm Lauren Bogelbaum and this is a classic from the vault. In this one, we did into the weird moment in history when Australia went to war with a local population of EMUs and absolutely lost.
Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bogolbam here with the story of the Emu War. It begins after World War One when soldiers returned home to Australia. The government was eager to show its support for veterans.
Take land.
The government said, grow wheat and we'll pay handsomely for it. It was a mission for the bright eyed and hopeful, for men eager to cultivate their futures. As they cultivated the soil in Western Australia. You could say the plan was flawed from the start. The government had ninety thousand hectors that's two hundred and twenty two thousand acres to go around, but that wasn't enough for the nearly five
thousand veterans who wanted it. Land was doled out as it became available, and the choicest lots were given away first. The remaining veterans got land in Perth, which was not ideal for farming. What's more, in the years that followed the initial land handout, in the early nineteen twenties, Western
Australia combated drought, frost, and a significant rabbit infestation. While veterans labored against the elements and the wildlife, Mounting financial challenges from the Great Depression threatened to undercut all they'd been promised. The Australian government had initially pledged to pay the veterans four shillings per bushel of wheat, but the bill tied to that sum was killed in the Senate. Another bill proposing three shillings per bushel actually passed, but the veterans.
Were never paid.
At last, in nineteen thirty one, the Wheat Bounty Act made good on the government's promise to pay for wheat at the staggeringly low price of four and a half pence per bushel. Let's put this in perspective. Pence is
equivalent to pennies. A shilling is twelve pence, and there are twenty shillings in a pound in today's market, one British pound is worth about a buck fifth, So these veterans were being promised smallish sums of money to start and delivered way less, originally promised a fifth of a pound per bushel and settling for just one twentieth of
a pound per bushel, ten times less than what was promised. However, by this point the veterans were desperate to make money off of their wheat crops, and the stage was set for a modestly fruitful harvest. No one could have anticipated what happened next. In the annals of history, there's perhaps no stranger of foe that the Australian emu, a flightless bird that can stand about six and a half feet that's two meters tall and weigh close to one hundred
pounds that's forty five kilograms. And at an even stranger battle of man with machine gun versus giant bird, the giant bird won. But in warfare it's essential to know the enemy. So let's pause and examine the bird that dogged the veterans. We spoke with Eric Slovak, bird keeper at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park. He said EMUs are solitary for the most part. They do get together in breeding seasons, but EMUs would prefer to be by themselves.
The exception is when they're foraging. Slovak likens that behavior to humans going out solo to a fast food lunch. He said, you're at McDonald's around lots of people, but you're not socializing.
You're just there for the food. Okay.
So they're big, solitary, hungry birds. Not much of a threat.
Right.
Multiply that emu you're envisioning by twenty thousand. That's how many descended upon Western Australia in nineteen thirty two. Until a decade earlier, in nineteen twenty two, EMUs had been a protected species. After that time, they were reclassified as vermin. Slovak explained, they'll eat anything they can get their mouths on without hunting. They're grazers. They like nuts and berries,
baby grasses, which brings us back to wheat. Yep, they'll eat that, faced with a seemingly endless buffet of it. The opportunistic birds homed in on the veterans plots beaten down by weather at a volatile financial market. The veterans leaned hard on the government. Help us, they implored, so one made GPW. Meredith wound up leading a military offensive against the EMUs, but there were a few conditions. The
veterans had to foot the bill for the ammunition. Lewis machine guns were used in EMU combat, and the veterans had to provide food and lodging for the men assigned to this curious mission. As a side note, a cinematographer from Fox movie Tone accompanied the military to film the EMU effort.
Historians assume the footage would have been.
Used in propaganda films to illustrate how the government was aiding its veterans. But spoiler alert, the mission didn't go exactly as planned. Armed with the knowledge that a slingshot can take down an ordinary bird, you might hazard a guess that a machine gun could wipe out EMUs easily, but you would be wrong. Emos are made to run, and when shot out, they're going to panic, and they
won't move in any reliable direction. And emo's legs, head, and neck move with elegant fluidity while their bodies stay parallel to the ground. Slovak explained, the body looks like a wave. The legs good left, the head goes to the right, and they run in all different directions like dropped marbles.
Meredith and his men couldn't get a.
Straight shot at the EMUs who stayed out of range of the machine guns, even when enterprising veterans suggested putting them on vehicles and pursuing the birds as they ran. The military wasted a ton of ammunition. Only two hundred birds of the twenty thousand were actually killed, and not only did the EMUs evade the troops, they destroyed even more farmland in the process, tearing up the ground wherever they ran. The veterans were dispirited and their land was devastated.
Meredith had a lot to answer for why had so much ammunition been wasted and was the effort even humane? Then there was the matter of money. The veterans promised to pay for the ammo, but the mission ultimately failed. Could the sun be forgiven? This example of ridiculous history can't be tied up conclusively with a tidy bow, and some details such as who was ultimately held responsible for
the cost of the ammunition, are unclear. We do know that the veterans learned painfully from past performance that rifles, not machine guns, were the best way to handle nuisance EMUs. They continued their war in a one to one battle Veteran against Bird, and the Australian government later placed a bounty on EMUs to help control the population. But finally we do suspect that the Fox cinematographer gots epic b
roll while on location. Today's episode is based on the article Ridiculous History the EMU War on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Candice Gibson. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
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