![\"This](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4JQINGZ_AFP__20260407__A6XZ7WE__v1__HighRes__ThailandAnimalOstrichOffbeat_jpg.jpeg\")
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\nA pet ostrich in Thailand went for a speedy jaunt down a busy highway on April 7 after escaping its enclosure at an animal-themed cafe and leaving his mate in the dust.
\nPhoto: Handout \/ Courtesy of Chairat Sompong \/ AFP\n<\/p>\n
A pet ostrich went for a speedy jaunt down a busy Thai highway, before being returned safe and sound to its enclosure at an animal-themed cafe.<\/p>\n
The six-month-old male ostrich raced along a three-lane highway on Tuesday (all times local) in Thailand’s coastal Chonburi province as cars and trucks sped by the flightless bird, according to a video posted by a man who was driving directly behind it.<\/p>\n
“Who lost an ostrich on the road? Come get him. He runs so fast,” the motorist, Chairat Sompong, is heard saying in the video.<\/p>\n
Chairat, 33, later told AFP that he was driving home when he came upon a traffic jam.<\/p>\n
“At first, I thought it was an accident but when I drove close, I saw an ostrich running in the middle lane,” he said.<\/p>\n
The ostrich “looked afraid and panicked”, Chairat said, adding that he tried to make it move to the left lane, where it eventually stopped running.<\/p>\n
Adult ostriches are the fastest running birds, with top recorded speeds of around 70 kilometres (43 miles) per hour.<\/p>\n
The ostrich, named B1, was finally corralled around 15 kilometres (nine miles) from its pen in resort town Pattaya, said the animal’s owner, Itsara Boriboon.<\/p>\n
“I was mortified and worried,” Itsara, 43, told AFP. “I was concerned he might have had an accident.”<\/p>\n
He said he had bought B1 and a female ostrich called B2 five months ago for 15,000 baht ($460) and neither had fled their enclosure before.<\/p>\n
Itsara, who owns a cat cafe that also features the pair of ostriches, said his employees told him B1 had escaped after noise from a truck delivering construction materials frightened off the big bird.<\/p>\n
The man who later caught B1 contacted Itsara, who drove to a neighbouring province to pick up his pet.<\/p>\n
“I will have to take care of them very well from now on so that this kind of incident will not happen again,” he said.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pet ostrich in Thailand went for a speedy jaunt down a busy highway on April 7 after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-369187","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}