Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Ostrich Death Machines

The De-Textbook by Cracked makes a great bathroom book. It's one fact I never knew after another, presented with charm, wit, and funny graphics. Here's my favorite new fact.

Not only do ostriches not stick their heads in the sand, they are, in fact, what the book calls The Terminator of birds:

Instead of telling us that the ostrich is a giant mentally challenged chicken that doesn't understand how sight works, why didn't they tell us that the ostrich is a three-hundred-pound murder-bird that can run sixty miles per hour for a half hour straight? Why didn't they tell us about its horrifying four-inch-long talons? Or that its knees bend backwards, turning them into jackhammers capable of killing a freaking lion with a single kick?

Your average ostrich has the ability to kick directly forward with a force of two thousand pounds per square inch. To put that into context, a professional heavyweight boxer can hit with about eight hundred pounds per square inch. So an ostrich's kick is the equivalent of roughly two and a half Mike Tysons delivering their best knockout punch, in the same spot, at the same time, with four-inch-long combat knives taped to the ends of their gloves.
Think about it.

1 comment:

Gina said...

I used to have nightmares about pelicans eating my arms. Now I'll have nightmares about kicking ostriches! LOL