Burmese Python eggs are about twice the size of chicken eggs and like many reptiles have leathery shells rather than fragile ones. He spends the next 17 days sitting on the eggs and keeping them warm. If Brennan is right, then the female tinamou’s habit of laying gaudy eggs is not so dumb after all – an individual female’s eggs are less likely to be eaten if they are in a huge colourful pile than on their own. This photo is from Kai Cabunoc-Boettcher, a previous volunteer at Finca Bellavista. Great tinamous are brown birds with white throats and bellies, generally around 40 centimetres long. The eggs are among the most beautiful of all bird eggs, always monochromatic and highly glazed. But they produce some of the most spectacular eggshells in the world, in colors like sky blue, lime green and rich chocolate and so glossy that they can reflect overhead trees and brush. Guttatus means "speckled" in Latin. Brennan thinks that the eggs might be brightly coloured to attract other female tinamous. To solve this problem, murre eggs are exceptionally pointy so that if one gets jostled, it doesn’t roll away anywhere—it just wobbles around in a circle. Courting birds raise their thickly feathered rump and display their brightly coloured undertails. [1] Its eggs are prized possessions to some collectors. Some bird eggshells have a coating of vaterite spherules, which is a rare polymorph of calcium carbonate. Read previous Zoologger columns: How did the giraffe get its long neck?, The toughest fish on Earth… and in space, Vultures use twigs to gather wool for nests, The biggest living thing with teeth, Globetrotters of the animal kingdom, Judge Dredd worm traps prey with riot foam, Flashmobbing locusts have redesigned brains, Smart camo lets glow-in-the-dark shark hide, Attack of the self-sacrificing child clones, The most kick-ass fish in the sea, The most bizarre life story on Earth?. [3], The scientific name for the white-throated tinamou, Tinamus guttatus, originates from two different languages. Many authors have noted anatomic and biological resemblances between tinamous and rheas. Many species have uneven sex ratios; preponderance of males seems to be more frequent. Finally, the team dissolved the cuticle using an acidic solvent, and found that the gloss and iridescence disappeared, leaving it duller than a chicken egg, though still vibrantly colored. #goog-gt-tt {display:none !important;} It is not known why the eggs are so colourful; one hypothesis is that females lay bright eggs to coerce the male to sit on them and obscure them from view. Incubation, which lasts 17 to 21 days, is done entirely by the male, who broods and guides the chicks for several weeks after hatching. It is suggested the bright colour of a Tinamou egg attracts other Tinamous to lay in the same nest. Why does it advertise its vulnerable young in this way? But the eggs are strikingly different. The eggs are laid straight onto the brown leaf litter, sometimes between the buttress roots of large trees, without any protection. But chemical analysis found pigments no different from those of other birds. They paint their eggs with smelly brown fluid from a gland near their rear ends. Why tinamous evolved such bright, glossy eggs is a mystery, but the authors suspect it may have something to do with mating behavior. Or as Dr. Hauber put it: “We need to find a way to ask the birds, ‘Do you care that the egg is shiny and bright?' They contain proteins, vitamins, and fats that we need to stay healthy. Tlnamou eggs are edible an1 similar to a chicken's in flavou1 but it's their glossy, dark choco late-coloured shells that are mos valued, especially by the crafter of decorated eggs. [4], All tinamous are from the family Tinamidae and members of the infraclass Palaeognathae. Given the high risk of predation for a ground nest in the tropics, the colour of tinamou eggs is surprising. What is more, the clutch will grow quickly because of the extra eggs, and as a result a male will presumably start incubating them sooner. Now a study in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface takes a close look at the tinamou eggs and finds that they possess a unique structure and iridescence — the only known example ever found in eggshells.
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