AKadwa, contrary to popular belief, Ostriches do not bury their heads in sand.This myth likely began with Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79), who wrote that Ostriches "imagine, when they have thrust their head and neck into a bush, that the whole of their body is concealed.
The English language is very rich and descriptive. Someone “hiding their head in the sand, like an ostrich” is said to be foolishly ignoring their problem, while hoping it will magically vanish. The ostrich does many things, but hiding its head in the sand is not one of them.
The myth that an ostrich will stick its head in the sand, in an effort to hide, may have begun with that great Roman thinker, Pliny the Elder (23-79AD). His real name was Gaius Plinius Secundus. Pliny was a man of intense curiosity about the world around him. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote about him, “He began to work long before daybreak. He read nothing without making extracts; he used even to say that there was no book so bad as not to contain something of value. In the country it was only the time when he was actually in his bath that was exempted from study. When travelling, as though freed from every other care, he devoted himself to study alone. In short, he deemed all time wasted that was not employed in study.”
So what did Pliny have to say of ostriches? In Book 10, Chapter 1, he writes, “…they imagine, when they have thrust their head and neck into a bush, that the whole of their body is concealed”.
Historians assume that this single sentence is the root of the myth about ostriches burying their head in the sand.
There is one interesting ostrich behaviour that comes close to burying their head in the sand. When ostriches feed, they sometimes lay their head flat on the ground to swallow sand and pebbles. The hard grit helps them to grind their food in their crop. From a distance, the ostrich looks like it’s burying its head in the sand.
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And I would like to pursue VVG's Q. Or rather, get the answer as it intrigues me.