Common ostrich

Ostriches eat mostly plants.

They eat leaves, roots, seeds and flowers. Sometimes they eat bugs and lizards. They swallow little stones to help mash their food.

Ostriches are omnivores, but most of what they eat is plants: roots, leaves, seeds, grasses, flowers and succulents. Now and then they snap up insects such as grasshoppers and locusts, or a lizard or mouse.

Ostriches have no teeth. They swallow sand and pebbles, which grind up food in a muscular part of the stomach called the gizzard. They can go a long time without drinking, because they get water from their food.

The diet is mainly plant matter, including roots, leaves, seeds, grasses, flowering plants and succulents, supplemented by insects such as locusts, small reptiles, frogs and rodents. Food collects in the crop until a bolus forms that slides down the neck.

Lacking teeth, ostriches swallow grit and stones that grind food in the gizzard, and San Diego Zoo reports that the intestines stretch to about 14 meters, extracting nutrients from tough plants. Ostriches can meet their water needs from vegetation and can let their body temperature rise on hot days, which reduces water lost to cooling.

Ostriches live in small groups.

They keep watch for danger with their big eyes. Do ostriches hide their heads in the sand? No! They lie down flat to hide.

Ostriches usually live in groups of about 10 or a dozen birds, sometimes 100 or more. With so many sharp eyes looking out, someone usually spots danger, and then they run.

Ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand. If an ostrich cannot run, it may lie flat with its neck along the ground, and from far away its pale head blends with the soil. Ostriches also lower their heads to turn their eggs, which may be how the story started. In the breeding season, males make deep booming calls and dance by bowing and waving their wings.

Ostriches are diurnal and most active early and late in the day. Groups usually number about 10 to 12, with a dominance hierarchy led by a territorial male and a main hen; aggregations of 100 or more occur. Excellent long-range vision lets groups detect predators early.

The head-in-sand belief is unfounded: threatened birds may lie flat with head and neck on the ground, and nest-tending birds lower their heads to turn eggs. Breeding males inflate a throat sac to produce a deep boom and court by sinking to the ground and waving each wing in turn. When family groups meet, the winning pair may take all the chicks, forming 'nurseries' of up to 300 young.

People have kept ostriches on farms for a long time.

Wild ostriches need open land and protection from hunting. Parks help keep them safe.

The common ostrich is listed as Least Concern worldwide, but wild ostriches have declined, mainly because of habitat loss and overhunting. Once they lived over most of Africa; the North African ostrich is now critically endangered.

People have used ostrich feathers for thousands of years. About a hundred years ago, ostrich feather hats were so popular that South Africa had huge feather farms. Today ostriches are still farmed for meat, eggs, leather and feathers.

The IUCN assessed the common ostrich as Least Concern in 2025, but its range has contracted greatly and the Smithsonian's National Zoo describes the North African subspecies as critically endangered and the Arabian subspecies as extinct since the 1960s. Habitat loss and overhunting are the main causes of decline.

Ostrich plumes have been traded since ancient times. In the early twentieth century they ranked fourth among South African exports, and by 1913 more than a million ostriches lived on farms worldwide before the market collapsed. Farming continues on a smaller scale, mainly for feather dusters, eggs, leather and meat, and San Diego Zoo notes that the remaining wild populations need strict protection.