June 16, 2025, 3:02 pm | Read time: 5 minutes
Animals kept in captivity often exhibit behaviors they likely wouldn’t learn in the wild. This is particularly noticeable with ostriches, which find humans so attractive that they display courtship behaviors toward us. PETBOOK editor Louisa Stoeffler explains the origins of this insight and how it can even be used for animal protection.
What happens when ostriches are more interested in humans than their own kind? A quirky yet serious study from England has shown how human proximity affects the sexual behavior of ostriches on farms, with surprising consequences. The unusual research approach even earned an Ig Nobel Prize for Biology. The discovery that ostriches find humans attractive has had important practical implications for everyone dealing with ostriches.
Ostrich Farming Leads to Misimprinting
Interest in ostrich farming is growing not only in Europe. The large birds are increasingly kept for agriculture, especially for meat, eggs, and feathers. In South Africa, this has long been common practice. However, animal welfare leaves much to be desired, and many do not know how to handle the birds properly. Breeding new ostriches also presents farmers with particular challenges, for a curious reason.
Observations and studies suggest that many ostriches on farms exhibit unusual behavior toward humans, especially during the breeding season. This was first investigated in 2002 by Dr. Charles Deeming from Lincoln, England, who received the “Ig Nobel Prize” for his work—an award for quirky, groundbreaking research that first makes people laugh, then think. And what insight fits this category better than ostriches finding humans attractive?
Researchers suspected, even before Deeming’s work, that ostriches “imprint” on humans, meaning they learn to see humans as their own kind during a critical phase of their development. This could lead them to lose interest in their own species and instead be attracted to humans, with dire consequences. The study aimed to scientifically investigate this connection and analyze the behavior patterns of ostriches in various social contexts.
Male and Female Ostriches Find Humans Equally Attractive
The study clearly showed that the presence of humans significantly influences the courtship behavior of ostriches. Particularly notable was that male ostriches displayed increased courtship behavior near humans, including physical displays that can serve both sexual and territorial purposes.
Surprisingly, many female ostriches were stimulated by human proximity and subsequently mated with male birds, also in the presence of humans. This means that ostriches show sexual activity primarily when humans are present. Conversely, they avoided each other when no humans were nearby. Without human stimuli, many animals apparently lost interest in their own kind, making successful mating significantly more difficult.
This type of behavior is also called “imprinting”—an early imprinting that can lead to a close bond. Now that it is known that ostriches tend to find humans attractive when improperly socialized, this can be avoided in future interactions, allowing them to have their first, formative experiences with their own kind. 1
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Ostriches Have Unique Prerequisites for Domestication
However, these results also show how profound the human influence on the supposedly “wild” ostriches already is. Especially when they are raised in human care or have seen many people during a particularly formative phase. Lack of sufficient contact with their own kind in young ostriches can lead to long-term behavioral disorders that hinder natural reproduction.
Since Denning published his observations, science has increasingly focused on the phenomenon. This is because it is unusual for animals to have adapted so much to the presence of humans. In two studies from 2018 and 2023, it was shown that ostriches now even benefit from their attachment to humans. They are on the path to becoming domesticated.
Particularly in South Africa, scientific studies have examined how human presence affects ostriches. Ostriches are very sensitive animals that show strong flight behavior and stress when faced with unfamiliar situations. Therefore, animal welfare-compliant husbandry is challenging, as the needs and complex behavior of ostriches are not yet well understood.
The 2018 study showed that they respond very positively to attention, petting, and a calm voice when they have early contact with humans. Young ostrich chicks adapt unusually well to this, which later significantly reduces their stress. This makes it easier to capture them for a veterinary examination. However, this was done before they reached sexual maturity, so they would not later find humans attractive instead of their own kind. 2
How the Insight That Ostriches Find Humans Attractive Aids Conservation
That this friendliness toward humans has already caused changes in ostriches at the DNA level was shown in another study in 2023. Ostriches that grew up with positive human contact showed a significantly higher willingness to approach humans. They allowed touches and behaved overall more tamely. Ostriches even reacted much more positively to familiar test subjects. The heritability of this behavior was also confirmed in this study. 3
The ability to distinguish between humans is also an indication of cognitive learning processes and potentially higher trust toward familiar caregivers. It was clearly shown: Ostriches are highly sensitive to a human-animal bond. However, it should be guided in the right direction so that the animals benefit from the interaction, rather than imprinting on us and finding humans attractive.
Decisive are not only the experiences of the ostriches but also their genetic makeup. Both insights can be used in both agricultural husbandry and animal protection to enable ostriches to live a more species-appropriate life in short-term or long-term human care.