Talk:Egg (biology)

This page needs a link to the page "Animal_Shell" included somewhere in the text.

Added it to "See also" Adrian J. Hunter 07:03, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Could someone please elaborate on how female animals develop eggs within themselves, particularly those that lay hard, calcium-rich shells?

What is the composition of an egg?

In the article, it is suggested that a nice egg is a zygote, thus a cell. Is an egg (like a chicken egg) just a cell, or is it a container that contains one cell and other material to sustain the development of the zygote? The difference between a fertilized egg and an unfertilized ovum (which is also refered to as an egg, and, btw, most chicken eggs I eat are unfertilized) is not clearly made. The egg yolk and egg white articles suggest that they are the nucleus and the cyotplasm of the cell, up until fertilization, should this be mentioned in this article? Is there a universal structure or composition of eggs, both fertilized and unfertilized? I can't find a diagram of what a (e.g.) chicken egg is made of, and what structures it contains, should such a diagram be added? Anthony Liekens 22:12, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

The german chicken egg article has such a diagram, there is no such article in the Englsih wikipedia. I think such a composition/structure has its place on wikipedia, either here or in egg (food), which I don't think to be a good place for that. What are your opinions on this? Anthony Liekens 22:22, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Images and fishy section

a good image to include

OK, well I've cleaned up the page layout of images a little in order to avoid the use of galleries. In the process I removed a couple of the fish images that were less clearly showing eggs themselves. Although we have already got rather more images than text, as Anthony Liekens says above, it would be a good idea to add Image:Ei1.jpg shown right - assuming someone can translate the labelled features.

Of more concern, I started to write the section on fish eggs and fishy reproductive strategies — now, as Sam Cooke might have said, I "don't know much about oology, don't know much ichthyology", so it would be a good idea for someone to check over this section and improve it. In addition there are some interesting things that could be said about parental care of eggs, particularly by cichlids and seahorses. -- Solipsist 09:33, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Colors section

I don't have time to do anything with it at the moment, but the whole section on egg coloring needs to be gone over. The overall impression one gets when reading it is that several different authors with widely differing opinions tried to sound like experts on the subject. The section disagrees with itself! EthanL (talk) 12:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

camouflage

I've removed the following

In reality, the speckles of eggs provide extremely poor camouflague, summed up affectionately by ornithologist Andrew Gosler of the University of Oxford who claimed that "a blind weasel could find them." (see References §)

As it stands, it does not make sense - Gosler himself talks of the strong evolutionary pressure for ground-nesting non-passerines to lay coloured and speckled eggs as camouflage, and anyone who has seen the eggs of species like Ringed Plover will have little doubt of the effectiveness of cryptic egg colouration on the bare areas they use for nesting - white eggs would be instantly obvious to any predator in that situation, whereas the cryptic eggs are difficult to see even at close range.

I don't doubt that the quotation is accurate, but there must be something missing from the context, which needs clarification.

OK. it refers only to Great Tits, which are hole-nesters and don't need cryptic eggs. jimfbleak 12:51, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

jimfbleak 12:30, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Egg sizes

Eggs of hummingbird, hen, and ostrich

This image is now available on Commons that might be useful for this article. --Spangineer^es (háblame) 02:09, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I added it to the gallery. Adrian J. Hunter 14:40, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikify

I added a wikify tag. The article seems oddly formated and somewhat incomplete. --Cody.Pope 19:29, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what it was about the fomatting you didn't like, but I've merged the three very short sections into one, adjusted image layout, and removed an image that didn't make sense without a legend (the image with the caption "a good image to include" on this talk page). I realise including the article title in the heading names is contrary to WP:MOSHEAD but I think it works on this particular page. So for now I'm removing the wikify tag. Adrian J. Hunter 16:25, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Also I removed the image of the cowbird eating another bird's egg, since you can't see the cowbird's face or beak from the angle the photo is taken. Adrian J. Hunter 16:25, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Oviparity

Why do Oviparity and Oviparous redirect here if they aren't mentioned in the article? — Omegatron 19:55, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Oviparous is defined in the third sentence of the lead. Adrian J. Hunter 03:59, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

A monotreme egg

I would like to ask if anyone could foward more information relating to the monotreme eggs, in what way are they different to reptile and other eggs, an image of an egg, and any other relevant information. Thanks.--Francisco Valverde 15:38, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Monotreme eggs are basically similar to reptilian eggs of the same size in internal structure. Also like most reptile eggs, they are semi-soft and easily dry out. Sex determination is genetic rather than temperature dependent. The young is very underdeveloped at hatching, similar to the young of marsupials. Petter Bøckman (talk) 07:56, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Very dubious sentence... Hoax!?

The sentence of a feline egg-layer is a certain hoax... --Francisco Valverde 19:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

How does an egg develop?

I presume that before it ends up at 1.5 kg an ostrich egg starts off very much smaller inside the mama ostrich. How does it grow and develop? How does it get the necessary nutrients? And does the shell grow along with the egg, or does it form around the rest of the egg as the final stage of development?

Grendlegrutch 08:34, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

kinds of eggs

This article is mostly about bird eggs, but arthropods, mollusks, and reptiles have eggs. This article should cover all sorts of eggs, and the bird stuff should go on an "Egg (bird)" page or a "Shelled egg" page. Leadwind 03:43, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

You are quite right. See the suggested merger of ovum into this article, discussed below. arkuat (talk) 06:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Please Read

An egg(chicken egg, lizard egg, so on) is just a giant cell, correct? I remember that it is just a giant cell. Can someone here verify/refute this statement. If it's true, please state that an egg is a giant cell in the intro. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MrZhuKeeper (talk • contribs) 18:03, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Merge with ovum article?

I'm a little troubled that this article exists side by side with Ovum. Any thoughts on a merge? Note that human egg redirects to ovum, while egg (bird) redirects here. This is not a good situation. arkuat (talk) 06:27, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Not merged, but better clarified and differentiated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.140.160.191 (talk) 03:16, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Differentiated? But there is no difference between an egg and an ovum in the biological sense. This is just a case of two words meaning the same thing. Human egg is currently a redirect; it probably needs to have its own article. Likewise with Egg (bird) or Bird egg or Shelled egg or whatever it winds up being called; if it needs its own article, we can make one. But ovum and egg (biology), I think, ought to be merged arkuat (talk) 05:26, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Amniote needs to be kept an eye on by any editors undertaking the proposed merge. arkuat (talk) 05:02, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to add a split tag suggesting that part of this article (based on its categorization in Aviculture) should be split to a new article Bird egg or something like that. Unfortunately, WP:Split doesn't seem to suggest an easy way to do that. arkuat (talk) 06:53, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Support, but following the merge the topic would benefit from splitting to form linked pages for "human ovum", "bird egg" to cover ornithology, and perhaps others, which might take a lot of work. Snowman (talk) 11:27, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the support, Snowman. I'd like to mention that the editors of Eggshell probably ought to be recruited into this effort as well. --arkuat (talk) 06:13, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Oppose: This article covers a complete multicellular structure containing a developing embryo; the ovum article covers unfertilized female megagametes. These are entirely different structures. Although the former does result from fertilization of the latter, the result of that fertilization is the presence of a new organism which was not previously present. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:16, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Rotten eggs

I got here from Hydrogen Sulfide as that article links here via the term "rotten eggs". However this article says nothing about what causes eggs to rot, or what causes the characteristic "rotten egg" smell. If someone knowledgeable could expand the article to cover this it would be most useful Manning (talk) 10:09, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Cellular structure

More information on the cellular biology of eggs would be interesting. I have read claims that an unfertilized egg is a single cell, making eggs by far the largest cells in biology. 109.152.156.146 (talk) 06:53, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Days til hatched?

There seems to be no general range of time for eggs to hatch. I realize this varies radically, but it seems to me that some general range could be stated. Student7 (talk) 00:05, 19 November 2011 (UTC)