You can't do that!

An ostrich (Struthio camelus) doing something rather unlikely at Chessington World of Adventures.

I find ostriches rather unnerving, and I hope this photo goes some way toward explaining why - apart from being much bigger than the vast majority of birds one is used to, they have diminutive heads perched on the end of ridiculous, pipe-cleaner necks. This isn't actually the most absurd pose that this individual pulled while feeding on some plants just outside its enclosure - at one point the neck pointed straight up at the base, bent almost at a right angle to fit through the fence, then bent up at another (near) right angle, and back once more so that the head was in a more-or-less horizontal position.

Anyway, the point of all this is that Niroot (who was there! He was! And he took the photo!) commented that if ostriches were only known from fossils, and he drew one in that position, he'd be lambasted for drawing the animal in an anatomically impossible pose. And he's probably right!

Of course, freaky as they might be, ostriches are really very cool animals; as the largest extant dinosaurs, they make it easy to envisage their huge, long-lost distant relatives. A point that's often made, perhaps, but true. And if these (mostly) herbivorous theropods are a bit offputting, imagine coming up against one with a huge head full of teeth. Feathered nonavian dinosaurs: if they're not just a bit scary, you're doing it wrong.