Species profile
About the common ostrich
The ostrich is the biggest living bird — up to 2.7 metres tall and 150 kilograms — and the fastest animal on two legs, able to sustain 70 km/h and cover five metres in a single stride. It cannot fly, but its wings steer and brake at speed and are spread in display.
Breeding males turn strikingly black and white with a flushed pink neck and legs; females are a uniform grey-brown. Ostriches are widespread across the open plains of the Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Tarangire and Mkomazi, where a striding male in full colour is one of the great sights of the dry season.
Life in the wild
Behavior & relationships
Behavior
Diurnal. Grazes and gleans while walking, and outruns rather than hides from predators. Males boom at dawn and dusk — a call sometimes mistaken for a distant lion.
Social life
A dominant pair with several minor hens; all lay into one communal nest, and the major hen incubates by day while the male takes over at night.
What makes it remarkable
Special features
The largest egg of any living bird, two toes rather than three or four for running speed, and the largest eye of any land vertebrate.
