Bird Egg - Shell

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:

    I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
    Isaac Newton (1642–1727)

    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)

    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)