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The Science of Eggs
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The Science of Eggs
To supply you for Easter morning conversations, we looked up a whole basketful of facts about this fascinating, ubiquitious culinary staple. (We’ve kept the focus on bird eggs, since it’s pretty rare to find an alligator, platypus or insect egg in your Easter basket.) Enjoy. How do eggs get their color in nature? While we dye eggs once a year, birds have found natural ways to make colored eggs all year round. Bird eggs can vary greatly in hue, from the bright blue found on the eggs laid by the tinamou or the robin to the speckly eggs of the killdeer. Egg color comes primarily from two kinds of pigments: biliverdin, which is blue-green (also found in bruises), and protoporphyrin, which is reddish-brown. These are laid on top of a shell that gets its base white color from its chief ingredient, calcium carbonate. Colors on eggs serve a variety of purposes: Bright eggs may help parents find their young, and are common to birds that nest in trees. Birds that nest on the ground like the nightjar or the piping plover typically lay “cryptic” eggs that are camouflaged to blend in with the vegetation and ground around them. Pigments may …
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