There is a widespread belief that when an ostrich wishes to hide it buries its head in the sand and imagines that it cannot be seen because it cannot see.
This baseless myth in one form or other dates back at least two thousand years. The ostrich has become the symbol of folly and is proverbial in literature for its stupidity. Even in the Old Testament (Job 39:17) it is said of the ostrich that “God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding.” In his Natural History, according to Philemon Holland’s translation, Pliny the Eldeil wrote of the “Camel Sparrow” But the veriest fools they be of all others—for as high as the rest of their body is, yet if they thrust their head and neck once into any shrub or,bush, and get it hidden, they think then they are safe enough, and that no man seeth them.” The notion that the largest of all living birds buries its head in the sand on the approach of an enemy was probably suggested by two habits of the species. In the first place, the ostrich pokes its long beak into holes in search of water, which it frequently finds beneath the sand of the desert; in the second place, the ostrich rests itself by sitting down on its folded legs with the neck and head stretched out close to the ground. While in this motionless position an ostrich is not easily identified from a distance and the posture may afford the bird some protection from its enemies. Woodrow Wilson, as well as Franklin D. Roosevelt, compared early American foreign policy to the myth about the ostrich burying its head in the sand. “America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand,” President Wilson declared in a speech at Des Moines, Iowa, February, 1916. In America H. G. Wells wrote: “Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see the American eagle, it observes the rear end of an ostrich.”
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