as well as the shape and quality of them differ much from the horns of our oxen.”

Little wonder the psalmist David linked the lion and the wild bull together: “Save me from the mouth of the lion, and from the horns of wild bulls you must answer and save me.” (Ps. 22:21) What farmer would trust this wild bull?

STORK AND OSTRICH CONTRASTED

God next asked Job if he could account for the difference between the stork and the ostrich, which are both birds and yet are so unlike in habits:

“Has the wing of the female ostrich flapped joyously, or has she the pinions of a stork and the plumage? For she leaves her eggs to the earth itself and in the dust she keeps them warm, and she forgets that some foot may crush them or even a wild beast of the field may tread on them. She does treat her sons roughly, as if not hers—in vain is her toil because she has no dread. For God has made her forget wisdom, and he has not given her a share in understanding. At the time she flaps her wings on high, she laughs at the horse and at its rider.”—Job 39:13-18.

Has the wing of the ostrich flapped joyously, as that of the stork? No. The stork has powerful wings and flies very high in the air. The Bible speaks of “the stork in the heavens.” (Jer. 8:7) But the ostrich, though it flaps its wings, cannot do the same. The stork’s pinions are of great breadth and power, the secondaries and tertiaries being as long as the primaries, giving an immense surface to the wing and enabling it to be a bird of lofty and long-continued flight. But can the ostrich flap its wings in such a joyous way?

What a contrast, too, between the ostrich and the stork as to where they nest and lay their eggs. The female ostrich “leaves her eggs to the earth itself.” It is not said that the female ostrich in the wild necessarily forsakes her eggs. No, but she leaves her eggs to the earth itself rather than trust them to a nest built on a lofty tree, as does the stork. “As for the stork, the juniper trees are its house.” (Ps. 104:17) The stork’s large and well-compacted nest is usually built in the loftiest places. Not so the ostrich. The earth is her nest. In nontropical countries the female birds incubate by day, the males taking their turn by night, carefully guarding the eggs. In tropical countries the parent birds incubate by turn during the night but leave them by day to the sun’s heat, the eggs being partly or wholly covered with sand or dust. “Actual incubation of the eggs is performed by the heat of the sun.” (The New Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia) By leaving her eggs to the earth and by keeping them warm in the dust, she appears to be doing a stupid thing: “She forgets that some foot may crush them or even a wild beast of the field may tread on them.” She may need to leave the eggs uncared-for at the approach of enemies.

Not only is there a difference in the nest location of the ostrich and the stork but also in the way they treat their young. Says John Kitto, in The Pictorial Bible, about storks: “No bird is more famous for its attachment to its young; and, which is more rare among birds, for the kindness to the old and feeble of its own race.” But the ostrich? “She does treat her sons roughly, as if not hers.” Wrote God’s prophet Jeremiah: “The daughter of my people becomes cruel, like ostriches in the wilderness.” (Lam. 4:3) Commenting on this rough treatment, English traveler Thomas Shaw wrote in Travels in Barbary:

“A very little share of that natural affection, which so strongly exerts itself in most other creatures, is observable in the ostrich. For, upon the least distant noise, or trivial occasion, she forsakes her eggs or her young ones, to which perhaps she never returns; or, if she does, it may be too late. . . . The Arabs meet sometimes with whole nests of these eggs undisturbed, some of which are sweet and good, others addled and corrupted. . . . They oftener meet a few of the little ones, no bigger than well-grown pullets, half-starved, straggling and moaning about, like so many distressed orphans, for their mothers.”

Yes, “God has made her forget wisdom,” and yet her young ones are protected by providence just as well as the young of the stork, the emblem of maternal tenderness. The ostrich’s very want of wisdom is not without wise design by God, just as in the sufferings of Job, which had seemed so unreasonable to him, there was a wise purpose.

What happens when the ostrich detects danger? It does not hide its head in the sand. Rather, it flaps its wings on high and “laughs at the horse and at its rider.” With its two long legs and flapping wings this bird outruns many fast four-footed animals. Historian Xenophon wrote: “But no one ever caught the ostrich, for in her flight she kept constantly drawing on her pursuer, now running on foot, and again lifting herself up with her wings spread out, as though she had hoisted sails.” Similarly Shaw’s Travels in Barbary says:

“Neither are the Arabs ever dexterous enough to overtake them, even when they are mounted upon their best horses. They, when they raise themselves up for flight, laugh at the horse and his rider. They afford him an opportunity only of admiring at a distance the extraordinary agility and the stateliness likewise of their motions. . . . Nothing certainly can be more beautiful and entertaining than such a sight; the wings, by their repeated, though unwearied, vibrations, equally serving them for sails and oars; whilst their feet, no less assisting in conveying them out of sight, are no less insensible of fatigue.”

When laughing at the horse, how fast does the ostrich run? “So fleet are they,” says The Encyclopedia Americana, “that even the Arab on his blooded steed can seldom overtake one single-handed, and even when hunted in relays, as the birds circle about their favorite territory, one or more horses are frequently sacrificed to the chase.” The volume The Animal Kingdom says: “It can outrace most of its enemies on the African plains. Forty miles per hour is a fair estimate of its speed.” Some naturalists limit its top speed to twenty-eight miles per hour; but Martin Johnson, the motion picture photographer of wild life, said the bird’s maximum speed is fifty miles per hour.

Jehovah’s words about the ostrich, wild ass and wild bull show that the great Bestower of instincts does according to his will; and what can man do about it? The divine will prevails in this as in all the affairs of life and we are wise to work in harmony with it. “You are worthy, Jehovah, even our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created.”—Rev. 4:11.

The Complex Starfish

◆ The more man learns about living creatures the more evident it becomes that they are the product of a wise Creator. Recently gained knowledge about the starfish is an example of this. About only one of the remarkable features of this creature, the magazine Natural History of November, 1961, said: “The nervous system of a single starfish, with all its various nerve ganglia and fibers, is more complex than London’s telephone exchange.”