In 1932, Australia sent soldiers with machine guns to fight emus, and the emus won.
Around 20,000 emus were trampling wheat fields in Western Australia, so the army was called in. After weeks of chasing birds that scattered and outran trucks, the operation was abandoned with only a small fraction of the emus killed.
Why is this true?
Emus can run at about 50 km/h and split into small groups when threatened, which made machine-gun fire wildly inefficient. Farmers were later given ammunition and bounties instead.
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More about animals
Animals are the easiest place to find facts that sound invented. Three hearts, blue blood, cube-shaped droppings, a punch fast enough to boil water for an instant — every one of these is ordinary biology to the animal doing it. The collection here leans on well-documented behaviour and anatomy rather than folklore, so each entry comes with a short explanation of why the trick actually works and a source you can read next.