28 They’ll Eat Anything

You know that pearls grow inside oysters, but would you ever think to look for diamonds inside an ostrich? Well, a hunter once shot an ostrich and discovered, to his great surprise, that the big bird had swallowed a bunch of diamonds. How could such a strange thing happen?

Like many other birds, the ostrich swallows small stones that stay inside its “gizzard.” The gizzard is a bird’s second stomach. It is where the food is ground up. The small stones help to grind up the food so it can be digested. The small stones do the chewing, because birds don’t have teeth. In the case of the ostrich with the diamonds, the bird simply had expensive taste in rocks. He used the diamonds to help digest his dinner.

Diamonds and stones aren’t all that an ostrich will swallow. If there are no stones around, the bird will swallow anything. Sadly for ostriches in zoos, this can be a fatal habit. They tend to swallow anything they see. In the zoos, this has caused the death of many an ostrich. Cruel or careless people often throw things into the birds’ living space. They throw keys, coins, and even large objects such as horseshoes. The ostrich swallows them without hesitation. Coins can be the worst. Inside the ostrich they wear down to a razor-sharp edge. They will cut open the bird’s gizzard from the inside. When one young zoo ostrich died, 484 coins weighing more than eight pounds were found in its gizzard.

你知道珍珠长在牡蛎里，但你会想到在鸵鸟体内寻找钻石吗？有一次，一个猎人射杀了一只鸵鸟，令他大为惊讶的是，他发现这只大鸟吞下了一串钻石。怎么会发生这么奇怪的事呢？

和许多其他鸟类一样，鸵鸟会吞下小石子，这些小石子会留在它的“砂囊”里。砂囊是鸟类的第二个胃，是食物被磨碎的地方。小石子有助于把食物磨碎，以便消化。小石子起到咀嚼的作用，因为鸟类没有牙齿。就那只吞了钻石的鸵鸟而言，这只鸟只是对石头有昂贵的品味，它用钻石来帮助消化晚餐。

钻石和石头并不是鸵鸟会吞下的所有东西。如果周围没有石头，这只鸟会吞下任何东西。对动物园里的鸵鸟来说，不幸的是，这可能是一个致命的习惯。它们往往会吞下看到的任何东西。在动物园里，这已经导致了许多鸵鸟的死亡。残忍或粗心的人经常把东西扔进鸟类的生活空间，他们扔钥匙、硬币，甚至是马蹄铁之类的大物件。鸵鸟会毫不犹豫地把它们吞下去。硬币可能是最糟糕的，在鸵鸟体内，硬币会被磨成 razor 般锋利的边缘，会从内部割开鸟的砂囊。有一只年轻的动物园鸵鸟死亡时，在它的砂囊里发现了 484 枚硬币，重量超过 8 磅。