Ask Shagg by Peter Guren for December 19, 2021

  1. Missing large
    Stephen Gilberg  almost 3 years ago

    The ostrich is the largest bird; the emu’s number two.

    An ostrich egg is purely white; an emu’s, greenish blue.

    The emu has brown plumage and grows blue around the neck.

    Outside of mating season, sex is difficult to check.

    The ostrich male is black and white; the female, brownish gray.

    The male sits on the eggs by night; the female does by day.

    The emu male does all the work of incubating eggs.

    The ostrich runs more quickly, thanks in part to longer legs.

    A lengthy tendon helps as well. Each foot has just two toes

    And just one claw; an emu foot has three of each of those.

    An ostrich tends to eat an all-plant diet, sometimes bugs.

    An emu adds in scorpions and spiders (I hear ughs).

    The ostrich has five species left; the emu has but one.

    The latter dies an elder when the former’s just begun.

    We humans farm both animals at times for meat and leather.

    The emu’s also farmed for oil; the ostrich is for feathers.

    The ostrich comes from Africa; the emu from Down Under.

    That covers major differences in case you’d ever wonder.

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