Birds
In birds, the process of breaking open the eggshell is commonly referred to as pipping.
Chicks have a pipping muscle on the back of their necks. It is this muscle which gives them the strength to force the egg tooth through the inner membrane of the eggshell.
When a chick becomes too large to absorb oxygen through the pores of its eggshell, it uses its egg tooth to peck a hole in the air sac located at the flat end of the egg. This sac provides a few hours worth of air, during which the chick breaks through the eggshell to the outside. The egg tooth falls off several days after hatching.
Kiwis lack an egg tooth, instead using their legs and beak to break through a relatively thin eggshell. The superprecocial megapodes possess an egg tooth in their early embryonic development, but instead use their claws during hatching.
Read more about this topic: Egg Tooth
Famous quotes containing the word birds:
“Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,
“Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!””
—Thomas Nashe (1567–1601)
“Go, birds of spring: let winter have his fee;
Let a bleak paleness chalk the door,
So all within be livelier than before.”
—George Herbert (1593–1633)
“To the birds and trees he talks:
Caesar of his leafy Rome,
There the poet is at home.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)