Life Outside PLT1

The post of the Ostrich (the letter O)

April 23, 2007 on 7:56 pm | In Alphabet | | Atomix

The ostrich is a flightless bird. It can run really really fast, up to 65km/h. They are native to Africa.

The adult male ostrich weighs in the range of 90-130kg. As a chick, the male is a similar colour to the female ostrich, being greyish-brown and white, but at sexual maturity of 1.8 to 2.7m tall, the male ostrich blooms in colour of black, with some white on the wings and the tail.

The ostrich has two toes. One is significantly bigger than the other and resembles a hoof. The legs of an ostrich are long and lean, with few feathers. This is what helps the ostrich to run at such great speeds.

Ostriches are nomatic animals and live in herds of 5-50. In the wild they travel together with animals such as the zebra and antelopes. They will eat almost anything, but chose to graze on seed and other plant matter. Also because they lack teeth, ostriches will swallow small stones and pebbles to grind up the food within their stomach. A typical adult has up to 1kg of pebbles in their tummy at any one time.

Like many animal spieces, the male adults fight for their hens (female ostriches). They will fight for 2-5 hens at a time. The winner will get to mate with all the hens that he has won the right for, but forms only a pair bond with the dominant female. The eggs of an ostrich weigh 1.3 kg and will be layed along with 15-60 other eggs. Once the eggs hatch it is the males tendency to attend to the chicks.

Ostriches are farmed mainly for leather, with meat being a secondary goodness.

The point of this?