egg
dr. dolittle | June 25, 2017 Image of a variety of bird eggs from Internet Archive Book Images, via Wikimedia Commons
Ever wonder why bird eggs are shaped the way they are and what drives the variations in egg shapes across species? I never really wondered that either until I saw an article in Science that explained a possible reason...then I just HAD to know. Some theories had been proposed suggesting that their shape prevented eggs from rolling out of nests or otherwise sustaining damage, and so on. According to the new study, the shape of a bird's eggs may be related to their ability to fly. Researchers compared…
dr. dolittle | October 18, 2016...in alligators at least.
Image of alligator eggs and hatchling from National Park Service.
Researchers from the University of Manchester, University of North Texas - Denton, and the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge - Grand Chenier, Louisiana teamed up to explore the effects of exposure to low oxygen on embryonic American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis). Alligator eggs are often laid in nests where oxygen concentrations can reportedly vary between 11-20% (21% is normal atmospheric levels). This is really important as issues related to embryonic development could continue to affect…
dr. dolittle | November 24, 2015 Image of chicken egg from Wikimedia Commons.
Turns out the egg is an important phase. A new study published this month in American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology looked at what happens in the egg when a chicken fetus was exposed to low oxygen (hypoxia) conditions. In mammals, this can occur as a result of maternal hypoxia, preeclampsia as well as anemia in the fetus resulting in less red blood cells that can carry oxygen. Understanding this is important as restricted fetal growth is associated with an increased risk for developing cardiovascular…
dr. dolittle | January 22, 2015 Photo of a red-eared slider turtle by Nightryder84.
Dr. Thane Wibbels (University of Alabama at Birmingham) is interested in studying how temperature affects the sex of red-eared slider turtle embryos. For humans, the answer is simple: sex chromosomes. You know, the combination of XX means girl and XY means boy.
Turtles are not that simple. Temperature is a factor in determining whether the embryo will be male or female. If the eggs are incubated at 78.8 degrees F, the hatchlings will all be male. If they are incubated at 87.8 degrees, they will all be female. As I'm sure you've guessed,…
esiegel | September 24, 2012"The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed." -William James
Up in the heavens, there are planets, stars, and galaxies all clearly visible in the night sky.
Image credit: Dan & Cindy Duriscoe, FDSC, Lowell Obs., USNO.
But those stars weren't always there, and they won't be there forever. The other class of object in the night sky -- the nebulae -- come in two types. On…
edyong | March 1, 2010
Snakes have been around for nearly 100 million years and scientists have found many fossils of extinct species. But this astonishing specimen is different. This serpent is Sanajeh indicus. It is sitting in a dinosaur nest and its coils surround three eggs and the body of a hatchling.
There are many reasons to think that this prehistoric tableau represented a predator caught in the act of hunting, rather than a mash-up of unconnected players thrown together by chance. The snake is perfectly posed, with its head resting atop a coil and its body encircling a crushed egg. All the pieces are…
edyong | March 1, 2010Souvenir shops in South Africa are full of lamps made out of ostrich eggs. The eggs are so big and strong that you can carve and cut intricate designs into their shells. The egg's contents are emptied through a hole and a bulb can be inserted instead, casting pretty shadows on walls and ceilings. The results are a big draw for modern tourists, but ostrich eggs have a long history of being used as art in South Africa. The latest finds show that people were carvings symbolic patterns into these eggs as early as 60,000 years ago.
Pierre-Jean Texier from the University of Bordeaux discovered a…
bleimanb | November 7, 2008Students at Shiga high school in Japan were amazed when a chicken of theirs laid a humungous egg which was 8.1 centimeters high and weighed 158 grams (Sorry for the metric measurements. In Fahrenheit, those numbers translate roughly to 14 feet tall and over 2200 lbs.). They were so amazed that they planned on displaying the monster egg. Someone, however, had the idea to cut back some of the shell to see what was inside and lo and behold, they encountered another, medium sized egg! Assistant principal Toshitaka Minami announced the finding to the school last week.
Who wants a whale meat…
zooillogix | March 27, 2008We have brought you the outstanding time lapse photography of Mochimochi Land in the past, but these new works are breathtaking.
No-holds-barred snail on slug rumpus!
"The Great Foot Race!"
Friends below the fold
Reversible chicken and egg. If only life were so easy.
"Beware the Ninjabun...He's covert, sneaky, and hungry!"
"The world's fattest butterfly thinks it might be time for a diet. The flowers agree."
grrlscientist | February 11, 2008tags: Egg in a bottle, air pressure, streaming video
This is an amusing video demonstration of how to get an egg into a bottle (and then, how to get it out again) without breaking anything -- neither the egg, nor the bottle, nor anything in your parents' kitchen [2:18]