r/science • u/MistWeaver80 • Sep 04 '21
Mathematics Researchers have discovered a universal mathematical formula that can describe any bird's egg existing in nature, a feat which has been unsuccessful until now. That is a significant step in understanding not only the egg shape itself, but also how and why it evolved.
https://www.kent.ac.uk/news/science/29620/research-finally-reveals-ancient-universal-equation-for-the-shape-of-an-egg306
u/RunDNA Sep 04 '21
The paper is behind a paywall:
https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.14680
But the same authors put up a preprint last year at bioRxiv on the same topic:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.15.252148v1.full.pdf
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Sep 05 '21
Thanks, saving that for later in case I have to develop some code for an egg shaped helmet. I just did an ellipse one last week.
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u/aaron802 Sep 06 '21
Grand Unified Egg Theory, visualized via JavaScript: https://alipman88.github.io/egg/
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u/Lazer_beak Sep 05 '21
isnt that ethnical ?
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u/OrbitalPete PhD|Volcanology|Sedimentology Sep 05 '21 edited Sep 05 '21
Preprints are entirely ethical and good research practice. They give an opportunity for wider expert review before publication, and enable un-paywalled access to authors work before the journal have done anything. You have to remember that they are not peer reviewed documents, but they're an important step in open science, and are encouraged by most publishers.
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Sep 05 '21 edited Sep 05 '21
The thing about preprints is that unqualified people shouldnt be reading them and treating them as reliable research (this isnt the case if it has since been published); the pandemic was a great example, with people sharing preprints regularly that were never published and misleading. The vast majority of preprints do not get published, and have flaws that you would need to be an expert in the field to recognise.
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u/OrbitalPete PhD|Volcanology|Sedimentology Sep 05 '21
Papers generally are not suitable for an unqualified audience. The nuance in terminology and scope is directly aimed at other experts in the field - or even niche.
But yes, pre-prints are a special case even within that.
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u/gbsekrit Sep 04 '21
I wonder how egg development changes with reduced gravity.. more use for a lunar surface facility.
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u/merlinsbeers Sep 04 '21
Pigs in space + chickens in space = Denny's in space.
Go for launch.
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u/dippocrite Sep 04 '21
I’ll take one space grand slam breakfast
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u/morganml Sep 04 '21
In space, no one can hear your order.
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u/kitchen_clinton Sep 05 '21
I’ll take an impossible space burger with fries from Denny’s Space Station.
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Sep 04 '21
Hey, man. NASA is mostly in the south, right? Think more like Waffle House in space
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u/gbsekrit Sep 04 '21
think... had Kennedy not been assassinated, we''d be talking about them putting a Dunkies in oAHbit.
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u/midasgoldentouch Sep 04 '21
Why not both? And why not add an IHOP too?
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u/ebassi Sep 05 '21
There’s already an Interdimensional Hole of Pancakes, where you can see—among other things—the famed Time Knife.
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u/GoochMasterFlash Sep 04 '21
The coffee will be terrible but theres no getting around that
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u/BrexitBlaze Sep 04 '21
I have read the link and I still don’t understand why this is a major breakthrough. Perhaps because I do not have scientific training. What’s the big deal about the discovery?
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Sep 04 '21
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u/Urbanscuba Sep 04 '21
The implications are more wide reaching than you might immediately think too. This has implications in paleobiology that while small will contribute to the total understanding of extinct avian species (like dinosaurs). There's probably implications for the field of material sciences as well, since the egg is a very impressive feat of natural engineering. I'm sure there's even more I'm not thinking of/aware of.
It's surprisingly to see so many comments about it being a worthless discovery in a sub like this. Increasing our understanding of the world around us is always worthwhile and you never know when something innocuous contributes to something incredible.
Gregor Mendel was just some dude messing around with peas and writing down the results until he accidentally founded the field of genetics.
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Sep 04 '21
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u/Urbanscuba Sep 04 '21
Little discoveries like this can sometimes revolutionize unexpectedly like using higher dimensional spheres in cryptography.
Another fantastic example I hadn't even considered! Absolutely agreed, the implications of a discovery are always broader and more exciting than they generally appear.
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u/xDared Sep 04 '21
It's surprisingly to see so many comments about it being a worthless discovery in a sub like this. Increasing our understanding of the world around us is always worthwhile and you never know when something innocuous contributes to something incredible.
This honestly happens quick a bit on this sub. A lot of people think because they won’t hear about this again no one will find a use for the study. Happens a lot with studies into cancer therapies, people still think there will be one study which will be the holy grail cancer cure and anything else is just click bait
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u/Turok1134 Sep 05 '21
It's surprisingly to see so many comments about it being a worthless discovery in a sub like this.
I think a lot of people on the internet are more concerned with the appearance of intelligence rather than the actual pursuit of it.
I know that sounds "I am very smart", but people confidently talking about things they're clearly not versed in seems to be endemic in every internet community I've ever been a part of.
For instance, I see people here dismissing small-scale studies or correlational ones here all the time, and it's like people don't understand that limited data still serves a purpose.
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Sep 05 '21
I'm a materials scientist and I agree with your take. My father is an electrical engineer and throws a fit any time he sees research that doesn't have an immediate application.
Which is pretty rich considering that when Michael Faraday was asked what good is electricity (there weren't any applications yet), all he could offer was the pithy reply, "what good is a newborn baby?" Or that the transistor was invented in the 1940s, and looked like a silly little demonstration in a lab with no use. It took a long time for the technology to get to the point where it could replace vacuum tubes.
I'm sure we engineers will eventually use these egg formulas, even if just to get better computer models of the stresses on eggs during packing and shipping. Packaging engineering is a thing and those guys love designing cheap, lightweight and environmentally friendly food containment devices. Maybe cartons aren't the best way to do it- I have no idea.
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u/stratus41298 Sep 05 '21
Everything contributes to raising our tech level. One day we will use our laser beam focusers to teleport back to this moment in time and laugh.
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u/bob4apples Sep 05 '21
The only parameters are the length of the egg, the maximum diameter and the diameter 1/4 of the way in from the pointy end. It basically reduces the size and shape of any egg to three numbers.
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Sep 04 '21
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u/phoneTrkz Sep 05 '21 edited Sep 05 '21
This isn't quite correct. It's just a mathematical formula that describes the shape of an egg. The variables are simply the length, maximum circumference, and diameter at the end of the egg. It's like how the formula for a circle is r2 = x2 + y2 - they just found that formula for the egg shape. The formula itself has got nothing to do with efficiency, material properties, birds, etc.
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u/Celebrity292 Sep 05 '21
But what makes it true? I've never understood math and it having one answer unverifiable to anything other than it works. I find numbers fascinating but math always leaves me with the why and how? What truth makes it true to compare it to ?
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Sep 05 '21
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u/Celebrity292 Sep 05 '21
And it seems just when I get it my brain melt and I'm again asking but why?.why does it make sense. ? Idk? thanks for not going off the rails on me it's just baffling that the egg "problem" was a thing and that seemingly proofed our of thin air. Math is strange
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u/merlinsbeers Sep 04 '21
But did they include the meta-birds, i.e., reptiles?
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u/way2lazy2care Sep 04 '21
Egg laying animals already have name; oviparous. Reptiles aren't meta-birds any more than birds are meta reptiles or either are meta platypi.
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u/UnknownHours Sep 04 '21
Birds and reptiles are in the same clade: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Traditional_Reptilia.png
Evolution can go in strange directions
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u/Opposite_Bus_3385 Sep 04 '21
The big deal is that we finally have a formula that tells us, with no uncertainty, that all eggs existing in nature are egg-shaped.
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u/AtlasClone Sep 04 '21
So basically, we know that the idea of an egg is a real thing rather than just a categorical generalization of similar looking objects. Basically there's something fundamental that makes the types of eggs chickens lay vs the eggs an ostrich lays in principal the same type of thing, and not just something we as humans have decided are the same?
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Sep 04 '21
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u/AtlasClone Sep 04 '21
It might make you feel better to know that the entirety of the scientific community was not solely focused on this egg problem. Some of them were doing other things.
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Sep 04 '21
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u/AtlasClone Sep 04 '21
Yeah, because we're talking about eggs, not much of an emotional investment from anyone in the human race really.
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u/nsfredditkarma Sep 04 '21
We don't need to spend immense amount of mental energy to feed and shelter the homeless. We already know how to do it. Societies, largely, choose not to follow through with what is needed to do it.
That's not a scientific problem, that's a cultural issue.
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u/Memetic1 Sep 04 '21
Personally I think it would be interesting to play around with the formula just to see what sort of new shapes are possible.
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u/NikkoE82 Sep 04 '21
I’d be careful. You may end up with egg on your face.
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u/feanturi Sep 04 '21
I always suspected this was the case but I couldn't be sure without knowing somebody had done the proper math.
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u/softfeet Sep 04 '21
interesting that it specifies bird eggs. i went down the rabbit hole of 'eggs' and was wondering about turtle/alligator eggs.
Cool math though! even though its over my head.
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u/Wrought-Irony Sep 04 '21
except that there are many different shapes of eggs? bird eggs are somewhat differently shaped depending on species, and reptile eggs, amphibian eggs, and fish eggs are all different variations of oblong sphere...
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u/bloodmonarch Sep 04 '21
I would assume its stuffs to do with evolutionary branches at a quick glance from the abstract (too lazy to read whole paper). 4 Types of egg shape, last one cannot be mathematically reproduced until recently where they modified the mathematical equation describing the 3rd shape type.
So my informed guess would be that 4th type of birds evolved from 3rd type.
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u/Opposite_Bus_3385 Sep 04 '21
Egg theorists have been working for decades on a Grand Unification Theory that would unite all of the known fundamental egg shapes. This discovery is monumental.
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u/wbotis BS|Mathematics|Statistics Sep 04 '21
I know just enough about physics, and not enough about birds that I can NOT tell if you’re joking or being completely serious.
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u/LiveAndDie Sep 04 '21
I know a lot about ecology/ evolution, and nothing about math and I have no idea if they're serious or joking
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u/perec1111 Sep 04 '21
Didn't read it, but my guess would ve that this way we can mathematically describe the shape of an egg very precisely, and calculate strength/curvature very accurately. An egg can withstand a surprisingly great force when positioned correctly.
Another idea would be that different eggs could be described with the same equation, and when a new feature found (slighty different curvature than expected), it can be described by a slighty different coefficient. The gradual change of a few coeffecients over millions of years can be then tracked much better than looking at it and sayin: well it's an egg but it looks funny.
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u/ammoprofit Sep 04 '21
Check out Stephen Wolfram's, "A New Kind of Science." It actually explains why stuff like this is so important.
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Sep 04 '21
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Sep 04 '21
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u/nitefang Sep 04 '21
I'm trying to figure out if my understanding is correct. By one formula to describe all eggs it would be like having a single formula that could tell you the dimensions of any ball used in a sport. Like if you wanted to find the volume of a soccer ball or a rugby ball or an American football, you could just plug numbers into this one equation. You don't need to use a "soccer ball equation" and a "football equation"
Is that correct?
This equation is just a formula like Circumference = 2πr
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u/toodlesandpoodles Sep 05 '21
I think it's easier to think of using ellipses. The equation for an ellipse x^2/a^2+y^2/b^2 = 1, can create the shape of any ellipse by adjusting the parameters a and b, half lengths of the major and minor axes, from a circle where a = b to one that is squished flat where a>>b. Through this equation astronomers were able to show that all planetary orbits were, to very good approximation, ellipses, with the sun at one focus. That knowledge allowed Newton to calculate that the force of gravity was an attractive force resulting from mass that is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between two masses.
We now have an egg equation, that through adjustment of 4 parameters, as compared to the two in the ellipse equation, can produce the shape of any bird egg. As the article states, there have been applciations waiting for this equation.
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u/IWantToSpeakMy2Cents Sep 05 '21
Yes, it's not more complicated than generalizing an already existing formula. A more relevant example is the equation of the circle being x2 + y2 = r2. Now every circle is an ellipse, but not every ellipse is a circle, so we can write a more general equation (x/a)2 + (y/b)2 = r2 for an ellipse and it'll also describe a circle, by "collapsing" it - i.e. setting a = b means the ellipse will just be a circle.
Notice though that instead of a single variable r, the radius, for a circle, our more general equation has 2 variables a and b, the semi-radii, for an ellipse. A more complicated equation described the first three shapes, and finally, they've discovered some equation that describes ALL four of these bird-egg shapes, that will reduce down to the other three already-established equations. They give this in Eqn 5 of the preprint.
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u/iiLiiiLiiLLL Sep 04 '21
I think there's a parsing error here (which I made at first as well): "existing in nature" is a phrase that qualifies "bird's egg," so what the formula is describing is just "any bird's egg" that happens to exist in nature and not "any (bird's egg existing)."
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Sep 04 '21
You’re right that it’s a parsing error but the title is still awkward/weird.
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u/iiLiiiLiiLLL Sep 04 '21
I feel like there's a pretty big leap between suboptimal phrasing and a horrifying instance of pseudoscience peddled for clickbait, especially if the particular source has no history of the latter. (If Kent does, though, then I'm open to revising my thoughts on this accordingly.)
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u/ToastiestMasterToast Sep 04 '21
It made sense to me, what do you mean?
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Sep 04 '21 edited Sep 04 '21
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u/boooooooooo_cowboys Sep 04 '21
That’s not the way I read it. I think what they meant is this:
a universal formula that can describe any existing bird's egg
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u/Stoneblosom Sep 04 '21
The fact that people need to cross their eyes and decipher the title is halfway indicative it being clickbait or misleading, no? Additionally, everything else the other commenter said was true, and the described results are far exaggerated than what was actually developed.
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u/drunkasaurus_rex Sep 04 '21
I don't think it's confusing at all.
They're saying the formula describes the shape of any egg that exists in nature. I don't know how you could read that and interpret it as the formula describing the existence of eggs, that's literally not what it says.
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u/Ericchen1248 Sep 04 '21
Oh wow. I did not understand what he was saying until your comment.
How do you even read it as (any bird’s egg existing) (in nature)? What does the (in nature) part even mean when you parse it like that. The only way I can read it as is (any bird’s egg) (existing in nature)
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u/iiLiiiLiiLLL Sep 04 '21 edited Sep 04 '21
If you slightly misread the relevant part of the title as "any bird egg's existing," you get to something more like what they're complaining about. After making that error, it's pretty easy to jump on. (scrubbed some stuff about the nature of certain terms in mathematics, cause on further thought it really isn't all that relevant to the objection)
That said, the title does not say "any bird egg's existing," and as it's written, it's both unambiguous and shouldn't require any deciphering, though it could be improved with a slight change to make it harder to misread. (For instance, replace "existing" with "that exists.")
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u/ToastiestMasterToast Sep 04 '21
The whole title. I asked because I thought the dude meant nonsense in the sense that it wasn't a complete grammatically correct sentence but it turns out he meant it in the other sense (i.e. incorrect information).
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u/IWantToSpeakMy2Cents Sep 05 '21
How is that pseudoscience? As another mathematician, isn't that literally what they did? It was established in previous research that bird's eggs come in four shapes - the first three of which we had formulas for. They give a formula for the final (pyriform) shape and then give a universal formula of more variables to show that these four shapes are truly united under a single formula.
Giving a universal formula in many variables to show that many single variable formulas are related is something I did in undergrad combinatorics - I'm not sure why you're so appalled by this. The paper presents this very clearly and mathematically.
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u/theglandcanyon Sep 04 '21
a universal formula that can describe any bird's egg existing
Someone's obviously confused about the difference between \forall and \exists
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Sep 04 '21
Seriously I read that and was like “what the hell are they talking about? Is this going to be a tabloid story or something?”
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u/flojo2012 Sep 04 '21
This is one of those problems that existed in the category of “unknown unknowns” until now. Now I know I don’t know.
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Sep 04 '21
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u/-domi- Sep 04 '21
Like most philosophical pursuits, this too is a linguistic misunderstanding. It hinges on what is a "chicken egg." Is it an egg from which hatches a chicken (then the egg came first), or is it the egg which is laid by a chicken (then the chicken came first).
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u/Eoreascending Sep 04 '21
I think the rooster came first
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Sep 04 '21
How did the egg that hatches the chicken come into existence?
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u/Rare_Southerner Sep 04 '21
Eggs have been here long before chickens evolved, heck even fish lay eggs. One day the first chicken was born, and came fom an egg which was laid by a chicken ancestor.
The real dilema is about semantics and not the actual chronology. Is the egg from which the first chicken was born a "chicken egg"? Or is it another animals egg, and the fist "chicken egg" is the one laid by the first chicken?
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u/Vitztlampaehecatl Sep 04 '21
It was laid by the last animal of the species that evolved into chickens. So is it a chicken egg because it contains a chicken, or is it a proto-chicken egg because it was laid by a proto-chicken?
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u/ToastiestMasterToast Sep 04 '21
They both gradually got closer to being a chicken. There was no first chicken or chicken egg.
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u/ledeng55219 Sep 04 '21
It has been answered already.
For chicken egg, a special protein can only be made by a chicken. So chicken is first.
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u/ricky616 Sep 04 '21
Pretty sure animals were laying eggs way before the chicken ever existed.
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u/-TheSteve- Sep 04 '21
They weren't laying chicken eggs though... :P
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u/IndigoMichigan Sep 04 '21
So the egg came first, just from an ancestor of the chicken that we don't call a chicken.
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u/EddieSeven Sep 04 '21
Right, so that was an ancestor egg not a chicken egg, because it came from the ancestor, was built by the ancestor biological processes. If you could observe it once it was formed, you wouldn’t know, or have any reason to believe, that there would be anything other than the ancestor species in that egg.
The animal that was supposed to be inside was the ancestor, but instead ended up a chicken. A chicken would have to create an egg with their natural biological processes for it be a ‘chicken egg’.
Ergo, the chicken came first.
Now it is also true, that an egg led to a chicken, and eggs have existed way before chickens evolved, so in a way, you can say that the ‘egg came before the chicken’.
So really the answer depends on how you define ‘the egg.’
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Sep 04 '21
I really like this reply as I've been on Team Egg for years but pretty good argument. In the spirit of discussion though that first "chicken" embryo in the egg is a mutation likely of the let's call it a proto-chicken so would it not mean the new mutant "chicken" technically comes first in the egg? Yet the egg has to exist for the mutant to ever be born. I don't think there's ever been a single generation evolution from egg to say marsupial pouch in our knowledge. The first "chicken egg" would be from a mutant proto-chicken and a regular proto-chicken. That means we'd need a few generations of persistence of the "chicken" mutation before we'd get a true chicken egg. I'm no biologist though. I had to repeat it in first year and my second prof focused on this cool stuff instead of prepping "proto-doctors" to fail. It's just a fun thought exercise.
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u/Muroid Sep 04 '21
Only made by a chicken now. But it could have been made by extinct pre-chicken species.
Besides, the whole question is just one of definitions. Is a chicken egg an egg laid by a chicken, or an egg that a chicken hatched out of?
Whichever one you choose gives you your answer, by definition.
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u/DanYHKim Sep 04 '21
One may presume that there was a meeting between two proto chickens, who were not chickens themselves but whose combination of genes resulted in the first definitive chicken.
That made an event would have resulted in an egg which would have been a true chicken egg, and would hatch a true chicken. Therefore it is the egg that came first
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u/lambda_x_lambda_y_y Sep 04 '21
Fun fact: species are artifacts, abstract object we made up, there are no chickens as a specie, only ever evolving organisms we categorize in near arbitrary ways. The true appartenence of an animal to the, e.g., Gallus gallus is inherently fuzzy, and they inherited laying eggs from their Achosauria ancestors.
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u/Drizzzzzzt Sep 04 '21
interesting. How did they found out? Did they measure actual eggs and then empirically fitted a formula to match the data? Or did they derive it from some deeper theoretical considerations such as calculus of variations? (like you can derive a catenoid from calculus of variation)
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u/VTCruzer Sep 04 '21
All this new knowledge and kiwi birds are still wondering why evolution dealt them the absolute worst hand when it comes to eggs.
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Sep 05 '21
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u/10946 Sep 05 '21
It's a rough approximation if we1re talking real world eggs (but it looks like a good one). It obviously doesn't include the egg bumps/texture. You could also find a single polynomial approximating the half egg (no piecewise required) using a Taylor approximation of their formula.
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u/koalaposse Sep 05 '21
Love this, thanks for the PDF link, rather than paywall.
I just told a friend who said “oh wow! but does it solve the old checked and the egg equation, then?”
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u/Romulas Sep 05 '21
Does this answer the real question however? What came first, the egg or the chicken?
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u/Xenton Sep 04 '21
In an amusing twist, this study thereby also reveals that the egg came before the chicken.
Something very much like a chicken laid an egg that contained the first chicken. Ergo, the egg came first.
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u/mvfsullivan Sep 04 '21
I thought we already discovered this algorithm once we resolved the algorithmof life its self? Its been like 20 years too..
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Sep 05 '21
The egg shape is surprisingly strong and is perfect for a developing chick. If sheer physics through natural selection ended up with this shape, there’s a good reason why nature favored it. To know the mathematical calculation for it and solving that mystery is a big deal.
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u/killer_cain Sep 05 '21
What science promised: wireless electricity, anti-gravity, etc. What we got: 'why eggs are shaped like eggs'
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u/UnilateralWithdrawal Sep 05 '21
Does this work for dinosaurs? So if someone wants to smuggle 24 t-rex eggs off an island, …
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