Last summer, an ostrich escaped into the streets of a Chinese city.

Why they were being kept in the city is a mystery to me, but their brief escape was a glorious one.

They weaved through traffic at speeds that made the motorbikes and cars around them look stuck in the mud.

And they towered over pedestrians and vehicles.

City dwellers are a bit too hard to win the attention of.

Most pedestrians and drivers seem not to even react, but then again, how are they supposed to react?

I realized reviewing the footage that this animal didn't look real to me.

I thought that perhaps it was because of their location, that they looked like they had been animated into their environment.

But then I watched footage of them in their natural habitat

and realized they didn't look real there either.

Today we're going to talk about an unreal animal,

the biggest bird on Earth,

the fastest bipedal creature on the planet. The ostrich. Struthio Camelis.

I'm Mackin. This is species. Welcome to the show. Yes, I will tell you whether or not this animal sticks their head in the sand.

Spoiler alert, they don't. But it's actually understandable that we once thought that. It's an interesting story, as I'll get into.

Welcome to first-time listeners. Welcome back to all the regulars.

Huge thank you to all the donors who make this podcast possible. It is a tremendous honor to do

this work for you guys. This show has no ads, no paywalls. The only way this show makes any money

at all is when people support it out of pure generosity. So if you derive value

from this show, if you like what we do, you can support it by going to speciespodcast.com

slash donate. Thank you, Eric and the Animals for playing me in. And now without further ado,

I present to you the ostrich.

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