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  Profile

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  In flight

Flightless Club

Common Ostrich

Struthio camelus

• common
• 64 km/h
• Starter
• Least Concern

Can't fly but sprints faster than any other bird on land. Ground express delivery with powerful kicks.

Population

Roughly 300,000-900,000 mature individuals (wild), population trend decreasing (BirdLife/IUCN 2025 assessment)

Habitat

Open dry grasslands, savanna, and semi-desert/subtropical shrubland across Africa; avoids dense forest; occurs from sea level up to ~3,000 m elevation

Fun fact

The Common Ostrich is the largest living bird and the fastest bipedal animal, able to run in bursts exceeding 70 km/h (43 mph); it also lays the largest egg of any living bird (~1.4 kg) and has the largest eyes of any land vertebrate (~50 mm diameter).

Range

Sub-Saharan and parts of northern Africa, from Mauritania and Mali east to Kenya/Somalia and south to Zimbabwe/South Africa; Middle Eastern subspecies (S. c. syriacus, Arabian Ostrich) extinct in the wild since ~1966; feral/introduced populations established in Australia

Diet

Omnivorous but predominantly herbivorous: seeds, grasses, shrubs, fruit and flowers, occasionally supplemented with insects (e.g. locusts), small reptiles, rodents, and carrion

Size

2.5 m

Lifespan

40 years