Their legs are also thick and robust - one well-placed ostrich kick can kill a lion. Moreover, ostriches have big, round and balanced bodies, which help them remain stable despite their great height.
Their centre of gravity is perfectly tuned for running. Despite being flightless, ostriches use their large 2m wings to help stay balanced at high speeds, which is essential to ensure that they don't easily fall and injure themselves when running. Ostriches are physiologically built for running. Their legs are extremely long with powerful, elastic tendons. Ostrich legs are highly evolved for running, and their centre of gravity ensures stability even at speeds of some 45mph - they're amongst the most capable long distance runners in the animal kingdom.
Since they're so heavy and cannot fly, ostriches needed to evolve powerful legs to outrun predators and move between territories in pursuit of food, water and nesting grounds. Their speed and stamina combined with their excellent sight and tendency to live in groups of 10 to 12 render ostriches highly resilient to predators. Ostrich's incredible running abilities also enables them to find food and other resources amongst the vast arid Africa plains and savannah.
Other birds would simply fly from place to place to find food, water, nesting sites, etc, but since ostriches are too heavy to fly, they adapted to running from A to B instead.
Ostriches can run over long distances without stopping. By sustaining a speed of around 30mph, an ostrich would cover the length of a marathon 26 miles in around 40 minutes or less. It's quite hard to estimate how far an ostrich could run in a day. Whilst we know that ostriches are very capable long distance runners, there are few, if any, scenarios where humans would be able to measure how far ostriches can really travel before they reach their limits.
Theoretically speaking, if an ostrich can sustain speeds of 30mph over 1 hour, it could cover some miles in a hour day with one hours rest between each 1-hour running period. Ostriches probably don't run for the sake of it, but only when they need to escape danger or find food and water.
There are two species of ostrich, the Common ostrich and the Somali ostrich. Because of this, ostriches can then focus all of their leg power on running instead of keeping balanced. Finally, despite being flightless birds, ostriches use their wings. They use them to balance and maneuver when they run so fast.
The two biggest reasons why ostriches need to run are similar to most creatures: to escape predators and to look for food. Living in the African savannah, ostriches have quite a few speedy predators. This may include cheetahs , lions, leopards, wild dogs, hyenas, and crocodiles.
The others can easily keep pace, even outrun an ostrich. Thus, for survival, an ostrich would need to be able to run fast. Thankfully, another defense ostriches have against these animals is related to their running speed.
Size: 7 to 9 feet. Weight: to pounds. Size relative to a 6-ft man:. Least concern. Least Concern Extinct. Current Population Trend: Decreasing. This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our photo community on Instagram. Follow us on Instagram at natgeoyourshot or visit us at natgeo. Share Tweet Email. Go Further. Animals Climate change is shrinking many Amazonian birds. Animals Wild Cities This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city. Animals This frog mysteriously re-evolved a full set of teeth.
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Digital Safari: The bird that can not fly The ostrich has strong and long legs, their legs are longest among all flightless birds, which means they have a longer stride up to more than five meters. The ostrich has strong and long legs. A baby ostrich. Two little ostriches. An ostrich family. Two ostriches.
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