While it’s highly insulting to call someone a “bird brain,” that phrase is perfectly appropriate when discussing ostriches. Ostriches are, of course, birds—the largest and heaviest of all living birds, to be precise.
Ostriches enjoy several other remarkable physical features, like being the fastest birds on land and laying the largest eggs of any land animal. Their eyes are also remarkably large—around two inches in diameter (similar to a billiard ball). That’s the largest of any bird species and roughly five times the size of a human eye. When coupled with the bird’s size and speed, an ostrich’s large eyes are essential for its survival, allowing it to spot predators from a distance. Like all birds, ostriches have a translucent “third eyelid” (known as a nictitating membrane) that helps protect their precious eyes from dust and dirt, plus long eyelashes for further protection.
However, there's one part of an ostrich’s anatomy that won’t be showing up on any superlative lists—its brain. At approximately 1.5 inches in diameter, an ostrich's brain is smaller than its eye. Even in the general context of birds, which tend to have smaller brains than their mammalian counterparts, ostriches are somewhat lacking. Studies have compared ostrich brains to those of ducks, geese, and storks, and found that the ostrich brain is smaller, lighter, and less developed than those other avian species, especially when accounting for differences in body weight. However, when it comes to brains and intelligence, size isn’t everything. The evolutionary tradeoff that led to ostriches having large eyes and comparatively small brains clearly hasn’t hurt their survival.
The awesome ostrich:
- In short bursts, ostriches can achieve speeds of up to 60 mph (97 km/h) and can comfortably run for extended periods at 34 mph (55 km/h).
- An average of two to three people are killed by ostriches every year, making them one of the world’s deadliest birds.
- There are two living species of ostrich, the common ostrich and the Somali ostrich, which was only identified as a distinct species in 2014.
