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50 free Ostrich trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The ostrich is the largest, heaviest and fastest-running bird alive, and this quiz gets into what makes it so odd: two toes where every other bird has three or four, eyes bigger than any land vertebrate's, a kick measured at 225 kilograms of force, feathers with no hooks, a flat breastbone with no keel, and a habit of separating urine from faeces that no other bird shares. It covers the eggs too: 1.4 kg each, twenty times a hen's, yet the smallest of any bird relative to the mother, laid in a communal pit that a dominant hen tidies of rivals' eggs. It also digs into the ostrich and people: the 'camel-sparrow' name the Greeks gave it, Pliny's head-in-a-bush claim that became the head-in-the-sand myth, Kalahari eggshell water bottles 60,000 years old, Roman arena games, the Victorian feather boom and bust, farming and racing around Oudtshoorn, the extinct Arabian ostrich, and why the birds around one South African town are statistically the most dangerous in the world. Easy questions ask which continent and how many toes; hard ones want tarsus lengths, incubation days and lung capacities. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on the common ostrich, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Our Emu and Birds quizzes go wider.
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Q 01The ostrich is native to which continent?
Africa
It once lived in Arabia too, but that population was hunted to extinction around 1966.
Q 02How many living ostrich species are there?
Two
The Somali ostrich was split off as a full species by BirdLife International in 2014; it prefers bushland to open savanna.
Q 03The ostrich holds the record for the fastest land speed of any what?
Bipedal animal
It cruises at 55 km/h and sprints at about 70, covering 3 to 5 metres in a stride.
Q 04Which extinct birds laid larger eggs than the ostrich?
The elephant bird and the giant moa
Madagascar's Aepyornis maximus and New Zealand's Dinornis robustus both beat it; among living birds it has no rival.
Q 05How tall does a male ostrich stand?
2.1 to 2.75 m
Males weigh 100 to 130 kg; an exceptional bird has topped 156 kg.
Q 06What colour are an adult male ostrich's feathers?
Mostly black with white wings and tail
Females and young males are greyish-brown; the head and neck of both sexes are almost bare.
Q 07An ostrich's eyes, at 50 mm across, are the largest of any what?
Land vertebrate
They help the bird spot lions from a great distance; the head and bill are tiny by comparison.
Q 08How many toes does an ostrich have on each foot?
Two
Most birds have four; the big inner toe carries a hoof-like nail and the outer one has none, an adaptation for running.
Q 09Why is ostrich plumage soft and fluffy rather than sleek?
It lacks the tiny hooks that lock flight feathers
That makes them useless for flight but excellent insulation, and it is why they made such good hat plumes.
Q 10What do an ostrich's wings do when it runs?
Act as stabilisers for braking and turning
Tests show they are actively used in rapid braking, turning and zigzag manoeuvres; the span is about 2 metres.
Q 11What is missing from an ostrich's breastbone that flying birds have?
The keel
With no keel there is nothing for big flight muscles to anchor to; the group's name comes from the Latin for raft.
Q 12The ostrich is unique among living birds in doing what?
Secreting urine separately from faeces
Every other bird stores both together in the coprodeum; the ostrich keeps faeces in the terminal rectum.
Q 13As the largest living bird, the ostrich is also the largest living what?
Dinosaur
That is why palaeontologists use ostriches to model the biomechanics of extinct dinosaurs.
Q 21Lacking teeth, what do ostriches swallow to grind food in the gizzard?
Pebbles
They also happily eat locusts, mice, lizards and leftovers from predators' kills alongside seeds and grass.
Q 22Ostriches can go without drinking for several days by using what?
Metabolic water and moisture in plants
They still love a bath when water is available; plants like Euphorbia heterochroma can be 87% water.
Q 23A territorial male ostrich 'booms' by doing what?
Inflating his neck
He defends a harem of two to seven hens but forms a pair bond with just one 'major' female.
Q 14The species name camelus refers to the ancient Greek name for the ostrich, meaning what?
Camel-sparrow
'Strouthokamelos' is still the modern Greek word; the 'camel' bit refers to its dry habitat.
Q 15Ostriches belong to which group of flightless birds, alongside emus, rheas and kiwis?
Ratites
Genetic work shows the group is not a natural one, so ostriches now have the order Struthioniformes to themselves.
Q 16What is thought to have split the Somali ostrich from other ostriches 4 million years ago?
The formation of the East African Rift
It browses bushland while the neighbouring Masai ostrich grazes open savanna, which keeps the two from interbreeding much.
Q 17DNA from fossil eggshells shows ostriches lived in which country 25,000 years ago?
India
Shells from Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh were 92% genetically similar to the North African ostrich.
Q 18Which country has a feral ostrich population descended from farm escapees?
Australia
They were introduced for farming and a small population now roams the outback.
Q 19How does an ostrich hide from predators when it cannot run?
Lies flat with head and neck on the ground
From a distance, helped by heat haze, the bird looks like a mound of earth.
Q 20How much force can an ostrich's kick deliver?
About 225 kgf (2,210 N)
The legs can only kick forward, but the long claws can disembowel a lion or a person.
Q 24Where do ostrich hens lay their eggs?
In a single communal pit scraped by the male
The pit is 30 to 60 cm deep and 3 metres wide; the dominant hen lays first and discards weaker hens' eggs, leaving about 20.
Q 25An ostrich egg weighs about how much?
1.4 kg
That is over 20 times a chicken's egg, yet only 1 to 4% of the mother's weight, the smallest ratio of any bird.
Q 26How do ostrich parents share incubation?
Hens sit by day, cocks after dark
The drab brown hen blends in by daylight and the black cock disappears in the dark.
Q 27How long is the ostrich's incubation period?
35 to 45 days
That is short for a ratite; fewer than 10% of nests survive the nine weeks of laying and incubation.
Q 28What share of surviving ostrich chicks live to one year old?
Only 15%
Jackals, warthogs, mongooses and birds of prey take a heavy toll on nests and young.
Q 29What is the record age for a captive ostrich?
62 years and 7 months
In the wild, most never get past their first year.
Q 30Which bird has been known to hurl stones at ostrich eggs to crack them open?
Egyptian vulture
It is one of the few tool-using birds; the eggshell is too thick to break any other way.