1Hi, it's Doug.
2I have here in my hands the egg of an ostrich.
3This is the actual egg, with the yolk inside and everything.
4Just for comparison, here's an egg you might be more familiar with: a chicken egg.
5Now, if we were to break open this ostrich egg,
6how much yolk do you think is inside of there?
7How big of an omelet could we make?
8Well, maybe you'll find out today.
9Someone named Connor has a question about eggs.
10Let's give him a call now.
11Hi, Doug.
12Hi, Connor.
13I have a question for you.
14Why don't people eat ostrich eggs?
15Oh, that's a great question.
16Ostriches lay the biggest eggs in the world.
17Seems like it'd make a lot of sense to eat ostrich eggs instead of chicken eggs.
18Now, maybe you're thinking,
19"Wait a second, wouldn't an ostrich egg have a baby ostrich inside of it?"
20The answer is, not necessarily.
21Chicken eggs work the same way.
22Definitely, an egg could have a baby chick growing inside
23if the egg has been fertilized by a rooster, a male chicken.
24But as long as roosters are kept away,
25female chickens will lay eggs that just contain yolk.
26No baby chick grows inside.
27This same thing is true for an ostrich.
28In fact, there are even a few places in the United States
29where farmers keep ostriches on their farm
30just to collect eggs from the female ostriches that lay them.
31A few years ago, I actually bought one of these ostrich eggs from an ostrich farm.
32I wanted to celebrate the fact that the company I work for, Mystery, had grown to be 10 people.
33I thought, how fun would it be to have a big breakfast with everyone at Mystery?
34Only instead of making eggs from a bunch of chicken eggs,
35I'd use one big egg, an ostrich egg, to feed everybody.
36Well, I went to crack open the ostrich egg,
37and that's when I found out one reason why ostrich eggs probably aren't that popular.
38It turns out the shell on an ostrich egg is really thick.
39Way thicker than a chicken egg.
40It's so thick and so tough that to get one open, you have to use a drill,
41like you see this guy doing here.
42But once you do get it open, there's so much yolk inside of there.
43A single ostrich egg contains about the same amount of yolk as 25 chicken eggs.
44That means, if you were to drill open an ostrich egg,
45you could make an omelet big enough to feed 12 people,
46just one egg!
47That day, I made one at Mystery.
48We definitely all had enough food to go around for everyone.
49Whenever I tell this story, lots of people ask me, "What did it taste like?"
50Honestly, I don't think I could tell any difference in taste between ostrich egg and chicken egg.
51Okay, so ostrich eggs are huge but pretty hard to get open.
52Most people don't want to start their morning by having to get out a drill to make their breakfast.
53But what other kinds of eggs have people tried eating before?
54Ostriches are the largest bird in the world, so...
55it might not be surprising that their eggs are the biggest of any egg laid by any animal on Earth.
56But that hasn't always been true.
57There were once birds even bigger than ostriches,
58like this, called the elephant bird.
59It lived on the island of Madagascar.
60Sadly, elephant birds went extinct.
61There's not a single one of them left on Earth.
62Scientists think it was probably because they were all hunted by people.
63But all of this only happened in the last thousand years.
64They didn't go extinct millions of years ago like the dinosaurs did.
65And so, that means...
66people have been able to find a few examples of actual elephant bird eggs still around,
67eggs that never hatched.
68Are you ready for this?
69These aren't fossils that turned to stone. These are actual eggs.
70If the elephant bird were still alive,
71it would hold the record for having the largest eggs laid by any animal on Earth.
72If you think an ostrich egg is big,
73take a look at this side-by-side comparison of an elephant bird egg with an ostrich egg.
74Now, remember I told you an ostrich egg is equal to about 25 chicken eggs?
75How many chicken eggs do you think a single elephant bird egg would equal?
76While no one has eaten an elephant bird egg,
77based on its size alone, we can guess...
78that one elephant bird egg would be equal to 125 chicken eggs.
79With that, you could make an omelet the size of a couch.
80And probably, a thousand years ago,
81people living on Madagascar actually might have eaten these for breakfast.
82But even today, people around the world do eat eggs of different kinds of birds.
83It's not just chickens and ostriches.
84Some people also eat duck eggs
85and geese eggs.
86These are said to have a different flavor from chicken eggs:
87more filling and creamy tasting.
88Emus are a smaller Australian cousin of the ostrich,
89and more and more farmers are keeping emus around
90as emu eggs might become popular.
91Check these out.
92Emus lay one of the most colorful, beautiful types of eggs in the world.
93And it's not even just birds that lay eggs.
94Here are some eggs you might have eaten and didn't even know you were eating eggs.
95Have you ever had sushi before?
96That's a Japanese food.
97On some sushi rolls, you can order them with this stuff called masago,
98these little orangish-pink stuff that's put on almost like a topping.
99Each one of those little things is actually the egg of a small ocean fish.
100Fish eggs are eaten by lots of people all around the world.
101Unlike bird and reptile eggs, fish eggs don't have any shell,
102and they're usually pretty small like this,
103which is why they're often used as a topping on food.
104So in summary, ostriches lay the largest egg of any animal on Earth,
105and people do eat ostrich eggs,
106but most people find chicken eggs easier to deal with.
107Lots of animals lay eggs though, not even just birds,
108and people eat all kinds of these.
109That's all for this week's question.
110Thanks, Connor, for asking it!