Mating Ostriches

I was bored and so I watched a show on Animal Planet about ostriches mating. Male ostriches fluff out their wings and feathers and do weird dances for the females for sometimes days on end to convince the female to mate. When the female is ready, she sits on the ground in a weird way and the male runs over and flops down on her back. I watched it happen a few times, but still didn’t get how the anatomy worked. I couldn’t even see if the ostrich had a dick. Television is a shitty educator.

The whole process reminded me of humans in a pretty funny way. Males have to jump through a bunch of seemingly pointless hoops to spread their seed. Sports, dancing, money, looks, cars, intellectual fervor, muscles, clothing, personality, homes… all aimed at demonstrating what a great mate the male can be.

When two male ostriches hunted a female at the same time, they would hoot at each other and shake their flightless wings to try to frighten away the other. Occasionally, they battle, leaving one ostrich badly maimed. C’mon guys, human men have figured this out. Bros before hos. No need to kill for a few short minutes of fun. But biology’s a bitch. Damned hormones.