Birds
Ostrich
Struthio camelus · also called common ostrich, North African ostrich
The ostrich is a bird that went all-in on being big and fast instead of flying. It is the largest and heaviest living bird, the quickest runner on two legs, and the parent of the biggest egg laid by any animal on Earth today.
Overview
Ostriches live in the open, arid country of Africa — savanna, semi-desert, and short grassland — where long sightlines and running room suit an animal that escapes trouble at speed. They range in loose groups, often alongside grazing zebra and antelope, whose disturbance flushes out insects and whose combined watchfulness helps spot predators.
Physical characteristics
An adult male stands well over two metres and can weigh more than 100 kg, with black body plumage, white wing and tail plumes, and a bare pink or bluish neck and thighs; females and young are a plain grey-brown. The neck is long and flexible, the head small, and the eyes enormous — around five centimetres across, the largest of any land animal, giving sharp long-distance vision across the plains.
The legs are the ostrich’s defining feature: long, heavily muscled, and ending in just two toes, an arrangement found in no other bird. The larger inner toe carries a thick claw. This reduced, spring-loaded foot is what lets the ostrich run at 70 km/h and cover five metres in a single stride.
Diet
Ostriches are omnivores that feed mainly on plants — grasses, seeds, succulent roots, flowers, and fruit — with insects and small vertebrates taken opportunistically. Like other birds they have no teeth, so they swallow sand, grit, and pebbles that collect in the gizzard and grind the food mechanically. They can go long periods without drinking, extracting water from their food.
Speed and defence
Running is the first line of defence, and few predators can catch a healthy adult. If cornered, the ostrich fights with a forward kick delivered with great force and the toe claw leading — capable of disembowelling a hyena or a lion. Sitting birds and chicks rely on camouflage and on the adults’ distraction displays.
Reproduction
Ostriches have an unusual breeding system. A territorial male scrapes a shallow nest and mates with a dominant major hen, who lays six to a dozen eggs in it; several minor hens then lay in the same nest and leave. The major hen incubates by day and the male by night, their plumage colours matching the light. After about 40 days the chicks hatch, already the size of a farmyard chicken, and are led away from the nest within days. Multiple families often pool their chicks into crèches of dozens or hundreds, shepherded by a few adults.
Threats and conservation
The common ostrich is listed as Least Concern, but wild numbers are falling through hunting for meat, feathers, skin, and eggs, and through the conversion and fencing of rangeland. One subspecies, the North African or red-necked ostrich, has been reduced to a fraction of its former range and is the target of captive breeding and reintroduction. The Arabian ostrich was hunted to extinction in the mid-20th century. Farmed ostriches, raised for leather and lean meat, now vastly outnumber wild ones.
Ostrich: common questions
Can an ostrich fly?
No. Ostriches are ratites, a group of flightless birds that also includes emus, rheas, cassowaries, and kiwis. Their wings are small relative to their body and their breastbone lacks the keel that anchors flight muscles in flying birds. Instead the wings are used for balance while running, for shade over chicks, and in courtship displays, and the bird escapes danger by running.
Do ostriches really bury their heads in the sand?
No — it is a myth. An ostrich sometimes lies flat with its neck stretched along the ground to be less visible to a distant predator, and it lowers its head to turn the eggs in a ground nest. From far off, either can look like the head has disappeared into the earth. An animal with a brain that needs to breathe would not actually bury its head.
How dangerous is an ostrich?
A cornered or provoked ostrich is genuinely dangerous. It kicks forward with a leg powerful enough to kill a lion or a person, and the long claw on the main toe can open deep wounds. Fatal attacks on humans are rare but documented, usually involving captive birds or males defending a nest.
How does ostrich parenting work?
A dominant "major" hen lays her eggs in a communal scrape and is joined by several "minor" hens who add theirs, so a nest may hold 20 or more eggs. The major hen and the territorial male do the incubating — she by day, when her dull brown feathers blend in, he by night, when his black plumage does. Both then guard the striped chicks, and broods often merge into large crèches.