Tiny eggs, gigantic eggs, blue eggs, speckled eggs, and conical eggs that are less likely to fall off of the cliffs where they’re laid. “There are around 10,800 different species of birds, all which lay eggs that vary in size, color, shape, and parental care required,” and a variety of these are represented within The Field Museum‘s egg collection, one of the largest in North America.
In this episode of The Brain Scoop with Emily Graslie, curator, “eggspert” and co-editor of The Book of Eggs Dr. John Bates shares some large, small, colorful, patterned, and historically important eggs from the museum’s collection.
Watch these next: The Elephant Bird Egg with young David Attenborough, a Kiwi chick hatches from an egg at Auckland Zoo, and SkunkBear’s How Birds Get Oxygen Inside Their Eggs.