47 Fun Facts About Ostrich

The ostrich is native to which continent?

Africa: feather hunters had almost wiped ostriches out there by the 18th century, and farming the birds for their plumes instead probably saved them.

A male ostrich's booming call is often compared to which sound?

A lion's roar: the low, muffled boom carries across great distances, warning rival males off his territory and telling hens he is ready to mate.

In Egyptian myth, the hearts of the dead were weighed against the ostrich feather of which goddess?

Maat: in the Book of the Dead, a heart heavier than her feather of truth was fed to a waiting monster, the 'devourer of the dead', and its owner was shut out of paradise.

Which extinct birds laid larger eggs than the ostrich?

The elephant bird and the giant moa: David Attenborough has treasured an elephant bird egg since he acquired it in Madagascar in 1960, and half a century later he went back to make a film about it.

A newly hatched ostrich is about the size of which bird?

A chicken: the hatchling doesn't stay small for long, growing about 30 cm a month, and at a month old it can already keep up with running adults.

What colour are an adult male ostrich's feathers?

Mostly black with white wings and tail: he shows the contrast off when courting, sinking to the ground and waving first one wing, then the other.

Which part of an ostrich is the largest of its kind in any land animal?

Its eyes: each is about 5 cm across, and perched on that long neck they let an ostrich spot a lion far off and be running before it gets close.

What is unique about an ostrich's feet among living birds?

Two toes: most birds have four, and shedding two is thought to make it a better runner, with the big inner toe built almost like a hoof.

Why are an ostrich's feathers soft and fluffy rather than sleek?

No hooks to zip the barbs together: the loose plumes are useless for flight and soak through in rain, since ostriches also lack the oil gland other birds waterproof with.

What do an ostrich's wings do when it runs?

Act as stabilisers for braking and turning: the wings were long written off as evolutionary leftovers, until researchers filmed sprinting ostriches steering with them like rudders.

Which ridge, missing from an ostrich's breastbone, anchors the flight muscles of flying birds?

The keel: flight muscles need that ridge to pull against, so a bird with a flat breastbone like the ostrich's cannot fly at all.

The ostrich is unique among living birds in doing what?

Secreting urine separately from faeces: birds famously pass everything as a single dropping, and the ostrich is the one exception, holding the two in separate chambers.

Since birds descend from them, the ostrich counts as the largest living member of which group?

Dinosaurs: birds are the one branch that survived, which is why researchers film running ostriches to work out how extinct two-legged dinosaurs moved.

The ancient Greek name for the ostrich, still used in Greece today, translates as what?

Camel-sparrow: the Greeks also called it simply the 'big sparrow', and Linnaeus kept the camel half when he named the species Struthio camelus.

Ostriches belong to which group of flightless birds, alongside emus, rheas and kiwis?

Ratites: DNA later placed the flying tinamous inside this family tree, which suggests its big birds gave up flight several times over, not just once.

An Ig Nobel Prize went to a study of British farm ostriches that aimed their courtship displays at what?

Humans: both cocks and hens displayed more when a person was watching, a quirk the authors warned could affect how well the birds breed on farms.

DNA from fossil eggshells shows ostriches lived in which country 25,000 years ago?

India: the shell fragments came from eight sites in the west and centre of the country, and Stone Age people had already been carving some of them into beads.

Which country has a feral ostrich population descended from farm escapees?

Australia: when its ostrich farms went bust the birds were turned loose, and a few lonely survivors still roam the South Australian outback.

How does an ostrich hide from a predator when it cannot run away?

Lies flat, neck on the ground: its pale head and neck blend into the soil, so from a distance in the heat haze the bird looks like nothing more than a mound of earth.

How does a cornered ostrich defend itself?

A slashing forward kick: each foot carries a long, sharp claw, and a single blow can kill a person or even a lion.

Lacking teeth, what do ostriches swallow to grind food in the gizzard?

Pebbles: the stones do the chewing in its gizzard, and the habit fed an old belief that ostriches eat iron, which Shakespeare turned into a threat in Henry VI.

How can an ostrich go for days without drinking?

Water in the plants it eats: that can carry an ostrich for days, though it drinks readily and even bathes whenever it comes across a waterhole.

A territorial male ostrich 'booms' by doing what?

Inflating his neck: he fills a sac in his throat with air to make the sound, which he uses in the breeding season to hold his patch and his hens against rival males.

Where do ostrich hens lay their eggs?

In a single communal pit scraped by the male: several hens add their eggs to it, so one nest can hold dozens, far more than any one hen could lay.

An ostrich egg weighs about as much as how many hen's eggs?

24: at about 1.4 kg it is the biggest egg of any living bird, yet beside a 100 kg mother it is the smallest of all for her size, so one sitting bird can cover dozens.

How do ostrich parents share incubation?

Hens sit by day, cocks after dark: each sex takes the shift in which its plumage is hardest to spot on open ground, and the male goes on to do much of the guarding of the chicks.

In medieval Europe, ostrich plumes were a prized decoration for what?

Knights' helmets: the fashion later moved to women's hats, and demand for plumes grew until hunting the birds for their feathers was a global business.

Which book of the Bible describes the ostrich leaving her eggs in the sand where a foot may crush them?

Job: the passage calls her careless with her young, yet it ends in admiration, saying that when she runs she laughs at the horse and its rider.

About how long can an ostrich live in captivity?

About 50 years: some captive birds have passed 60, and that long life is why birds set loose from failed farms can still be found roaming decades later.

Which bird has been known to hurl stones at ostrich eggs to crack them open?

Egyptian vulture: it carries a stone in its bill and flings it at the shell again and again until it cracks, a rare case of a wild bird using a tool.

Which Roman writer probably started the myth that ostriches think they're hidden when their head is in a bush?

Pliny the Elder: the same passage of his Natural History marvels that the bird can digest anything at all, then calls it just as remarkably stupid for thinking a bush over its head hides the rest.

Kalahari hunter-gatherers have long used ostrich eggshells as what?

Water containers: the emptied shell is filled through a small hole and carried like a flask, and engraved fragments show that people were already doing this 60,000 years ago.

A golden fan showing a pharaoh hunting ostriches for its plumes was found in whose tomb?

Tutankhamun: the gilded fan lay between the shrines around his coffin, and although its ostrich plumes rotted away long ago, the hunting scene embossed in the gold survives.

Which Roman emperor beheaded an ostrich in the arena, then brandished its head at the watching senators?

Commodus: the senator Cassius Dio, who was sitting there, wrote that he chewed laurel leaves from his garland to hide his laughter, since laughing at the emperor could have got him killed.

The boom in ostrich feathers for fashionable hats collapsed around which event?

World War I: the war was only part of it, because open-topped motor cars had already made tall feathered hats almost impossible to wear at speed.

Which country pioneered ostrich farming in the 19th century, when plumes were high fashion?

South Africa: its farmers grew so rich on the trade that by the early 1900s ostrich plumes were the country's fourth-biggest export, behind only gold, diamonds and wool.

Ostrich meat is described as tasting like what?

Lean beef: although the ostrich is a bird, its meat is dark red and counts as a red meat, with less fat and cholesterol than the beef it resembles.

In which 1982 arcade classic does the first player's hero ride a flying ostrich?

Joust: you flap to stay airborne and unseat rivals mounted on buzzards by hitting them from above, because in every clash the higher lance wins.

Which subspecies became extinct around 1966?

Attempts to reintroduce ostriches to Israel have failed; North African birds are on CITES Appendix I.

The raised bumps that make ostrich leather instantly recognisable are what?

Feather follicles: each bump marks the spot where a quill once grew, and buyers prize the pattern so much that a hide is marked down if its follicles are poorly developed.

Where do ostrich chicks shelter from the fierce midday sun?

Under a parent's wings: the adults shelter chicks from rain the same way, and when a predator appears one parent puts on a distraction display so the brood can scatter for cover.

Wild ostriches often feed alongside herds of which animals?

Zebras and antelopes: a mixed herd spots predators sooner, pairing the tall birds' view with the mammals' alertness, and the grazers' hooves stir up insects for the ostriches to snap up.

No animal on two legs runs faster than an ostrich; roughly what speed can it reach in a sprint?

About 70 km/h: each stride covers up to five metres, and because it can hold some 50 km/h over long distances, a predator has to ambush an ostrich, not chase it down.

Three white ostrich feathers form the heraldic badge of which royal heir?

The Prince of Wales: the plumes and the motto 'I serve' go back to Edward the Black Prince, the 14th-century heir who wore them on his seals and his shield.

Which ostrich, found from Ethiopia to Kenya, is ranked as a species of its own?

Somali: long filed as just another subspecies, it is one of only two living ostrich species and, unlike its common cousin, is listed as Vulnerable.

Farmed ostrich plumes are commonly made into which household item?

Feather dusters: the fluffy plumes that once topped the most fashionable of hats now often end up dusting shelves instead.

A territorial male ostrich pair-bonds with only which of his hens?

The dominant hen: the two stay together to guard the nest and raise the chicks, however many other hens he mates with along the way.