Shell
Bird eggshells are diverse. For example:
- cormorant eggs are rough and chalky
- tinamou eggs are shiny
- duck eggs are oily and waterproof
- cassowary eggs are heavily pitted
Tiny pores in a bird eggshell allow the embryo to breathe. The domestic hen's egg has around 7500 pores.
Read more about this topic: Bird Egg
Famous quotes containing the word shell:
“How then can we account for the persistence of the myth that inside the empty nest lives a shattered and depressed shell of a woman—a woman in constant pain because her children no longer live under her roof? Is it possible that a notion so pervasive is, in fact, just a myth?”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“If there was one egg in it there were nine,
Torpedo-like, with shell of gritty leather,
All packed in sand to wait the trump together.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“I was even more surprised at the power of the waves, exhibited on this shattered fragment, than I had been at the sight of the smaller fragments before. The largest timbers and iron braces were broken superfluously, and I saw that no material could withstand the power of the waves; that iron must go to pieces in such a case, and an iron vessel would be cracked up like an egg- shell on the rocks.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)