Oology (EGGS) Encore + Bonus Material with John Bates

Hey, what's up. So it's twenty twenty one, and it's a lady from your mom's book club, one who apologizes even when she brings cookies and up top, I want to tell you that this is an encore of an episode that went up in twenty eighteen, and it has a ton of never before heard bonus content and asides

You know.

What I didn't realize also is that this museum is so big that our commute from one office to the other, that's a good time.

In a commute.

I should have left a trailer breadcrumbs to the office of an expert in bird babies, this kind faced, spectacled gentleman with thick salt and pepper hair and a desk piled with eggbooks and field notes. But it was a Friday afternoon at four pm, and I just hated to keep him from his weekend. So some of the questions and answers are super rapid fire. But then we had such a jolly time hanging out that afterwards he offered to give me a tour of the egg bunker, and

No? I am not?

What not an oologist? He literally edited the book of eggs. It's called the Book of Eggs and his name is on the cover. Like not an oologist. He studies bird eggs. Okay, I gotta breathe that. Okay, more on this situation a minute. But he is definitely an evolutionary biologist slash ornithologist and officially an associated curator of birds and head of the Life Sciences Division at the Field Museum in Chicago. Or

Well, I'm a curator and so we have one of the world's greatest collections of birds here in the museum, and so one of the things I've been interested in over the years is all aspects of av and biology. But the egg part actually came about because we have an egg collection and I feel like it's my responsibility to know something about eggs.

So after the interview at his desk. John took me down this labyrinth into the bowels of the museum, just stuffed with millions of scientific artifacts, like for real, actually millions of artifacts. What you see on displays at museums is this laughably small representation of their actual shit they have in files and drawers and boxes behind the scenes. So behind these scenes we came upon a room labeled egg Collection, to which John had the keys. Wow, what this looks like a like a bank bunker.

They really look like they do.

Yeah, oh my god.

So how many specimen in.

This from so probably about one hundred thousand eggs.

But now, why do you say you're not an oologist even though you study bird eggs?

Yeah, that's because basically, I don't know if you could find anybody who had described themselves as an oologist anymore. It's a field that's it's an extinctology at some level, which is too bad. That's actually one of the things that we're interested in, some colleagues and I are interested in. We're actually working on a paper right now trying to encourage people to remember, and that is that there's these incredible collections of eggs around the world, and a lot

So, okay, so oology can mean the study of eggs, but it can also refer to the hobby of collecting wild bird eggs, also called egg in Now, at some point these amateur egg scholars stopped egging because it became illegal. People were like, well, you are stealing babies now, Wikipedia says, and I quote despite this, some of those who engage in egg collecting show considerable recidivism. That is legal speak for doing bad shit again like chasing the dragon egg.

But then the other thing that happened was you had the advent of things like cameras, and suddenly you know, people you could make an argument that you didn't need the specimen per se if you could take a picture of the eggs.

So do you think that if you're not out actively collecting and studying eggs, then you're not an oologist?

Well, I think so I like to describe it actually as an interesting way, I think from the perspective of humans, which is that in some level it's like pediatrics. Right, So here's this field where people study children, and this is a field where people studied eggs. But it's a specialization within pediatrics, right, a specific thing. And I think that in part it was just because collecting eggs kind of literally fell out of favor, and so the termoology actually fell by the wayside. At some point.

I think it's time to resurrect it.

I mean, that's actually I mean there's a lot of science that can be done with eggs.

Yeah, So tell me about the collection you have, and what do you like about eggs, because I feel like you have to be into them in order to study them. I think aptitude is backed by passion, I'm guessing. So what is it about birds and bird eggs that you that you love or that you're drawn to?

So what I'd say, I think it's interesting to say. I mean, eggs themselves are just beautiful things in nature, for one thing, But when you look at these collections, you start realizing that they're incredibly valuable pieces of our understanding of early natural history. So one of the things I always like to say to people is that, you know, you go back to our collections of bird specimens from the eighteen eighties a lot of times and they have

So it's kind of like the thank you for the nest plundering. Back then you monocled dere liks, But yeah, no, we don't do that now. That's out a pastime. Let's just play video games or scroll through pictures of other people's vacations on a tiny screen. But the dates in all of those amateur egg collections are very helpful.

So, for instance, we can look at nest laying dates for birds in the Midwest and ask the question if we have data from modern birds on when they were at laying and this is based on field observations from

To climate change.

So climate change is a biggie, as are the effects of pesticides and pollutants. So one huge detective story is often cited when the topic of vintage eggs comes up.

You know, when I show this to people and I talk about why we have these collections. One of my favorite examples is, you know, paragon falcon eggs. So these were collected in the eighteen nineties in North Dakota. Wow, and paragon falcons in the nineteen sixties, along with ospreys and bald eagles, had their populations plummeted, and paragon falcons actually went extinct in eastern North America, and what was

And so so it's so cool to see current research being done on specimens that have been collected one hundred years exactly. So just think some of the science that you do today might help future generations to study, like which plants existed before the robots that we download our consciousness into took over the earth and mined all the gold to make toilets and then darken the sky with clean coal emissions? Is that too dark? Sorry? When they would collect the eggs, would they blow the eggs out

Yeah? So yeah, right, so I yes, they would put roll a little hole in them, and it was a real art. I mean they were really good at it, and they would carefully inject a little bit of air and once you do that, you can blow the contents out of a very small hole and you're left with the egg shell.

Can you explain to me how an egg is formed? Because it is kind of odd to be like, Hi, I'm a bird, I'm soft, a fluffy, and then boink, there's this hard thing that comes out of your cloaca. What is it?

Yeah?

Basically, the female has this developing ovum and her oviduct and it goes down and there's a glands that produce the the shell material, and it gradually rotates and forms, and you get the production of this perfectly layered, hard and yet thin thing covering that developing embryo in an incredible way. That and then there are all kinds of interesting things that happen after that with respect to making the eggs colorful or spotted or things like that.

Yeah.

So is it like layers on a jawbreaker, like layer after layer of like this calcium or is it like one layer of shell that happens at once.

Yeah, No, it's my understanding of it is it's a layer thing, and they actually is there going down the oviduct the shell gland is actually putting it, layingering on that material so that when it comes out it's it's a perfectly formed egg.

And then where is the air brushing station in the oviduct? Like where are they putting on the speckles? And like the robin egg blue colors.

It's done in the as it's passing along through the kloaca and in the overduct. And there are these melonin producing glands that are cells that will actually make the color. But that's something that actually some of the aspects of that are still debated by scientists. We don't know how some colors on certain types of eggs are made.

And I understand, Like, okay, so we're surrounded by these beautiful posters of eggs and I understand eggs. It looks like granite boom. Is it an egg or a rock? I don't know. I can't tell. I'm not going to eat it. I get it. But like a bright blue robin's egg in a green tree, what's happening there that seems so conspicuous?

Yeah, so quick answer, We don't know, okay, right, but there are these eggs. If I showed you eggs of Tinamus, which are these neotropical birds that a bunch of species, they look like little chickens that run around in either forest or an open country, and they lay these incredibly enameled eggs that can be anywhere from blue to brown to green, and they're just just incredibly enameled. And we don't know why they do that.

Wow.

And one hypothesis, which is kind of crazy, would be just they wanted to look so weird that no predator would look at that and go, yeah, that's something we should eat.

And they wanted to look like a weird toy or a piece of ceramic or something like that.

Yeah, because I mean they literally don't look like anything you would find in nature.

So down in the vault, John showed me another egg that look like a prop Like, no way did a bird button make this? Oh my god, are you kidding me?

These common muror nests eggs, so this cliff Nester, and you can see these are from Ireland, and then they would have been laid by different females such that the female could actually individually recognize each egg. And you can see these things like all these little squiggles come from the egg twisting as it's coming down the Wow, the overduct and it looks like.

You just took a sharpie or a marker.

Yeah, to them, it looks.

Like you you let your like four year old nephew color them in, you know what I mean, But like or Jackson Pollock. Oh my god, they're gorgeous.

Though.

You can see this one sat for a while and.

Oh inside of the.

Oviducts, yeah, inside the overduct and so it gets.

It gets more of that speckl right exactly familiar. Oh, from those cells. That's so I never knew that's how it happened. I mean, that's so crazy to think of it twisting and turning and making those marks. So just squiggling down the bird butt canal getting a streaky paint job on the way, it's so delicately magic, gross and beautiful. And what about egg shape? Why are they the shape that they are?

So that's an interesting question that's been studied and published on fairly recently and not one of the hypotheses is that it's related to body shape at some point. Eggs a lot. I mean, eggs have a fairly defined shape for the most part, but they're really interesting aspects of certain eggs. So for instance, eggs of some of the birds that breed on cliffs, like common mirrors and things, are these long pointed have a thick base and then

And do you eat eggs. I do eat eggs, okay, So you're not like you don't have a situation where you're like, oh, I can't do it right? No, is it bad for us to eat chicken eggs?

So I always like to say that. My pediatrician used to flip back and forth. Every year I went to him, Oh really, my mom crazy, Like he would come in and say eggs are good for your son. Good, Nope, next year, eggs are bad for you.

So side note, I was like, yeah, what's up with eggs having this like big reputation. So in nineteen sixty eight, the American Heart Association advised people not to have more than three egg yolks per week. It's like eggs are canceled. Unfollow eggs on Twitter, do not invite them to breakfast. And then years later some news came out that was like, nah, eggs are fine. And then in the last few years, this new cholesterol kills campaign came out and that's done

But I'm not an MD.

Not that you'll be making a bunch of omelets now, I'm sorry, but if you were, you'd have to break some eggs. But what if it's a museum egg and you're an oologist. Have you ever broken an egg and been like oh shit?

Well, so the quick answer is no.

But back in the cool egg dungeon, John withdraws a drawer slowly and he tells me a tale of a thousand cringes.

One of the greatest curators of birds at the Field Museum, a guy named Mel Trailer, apparently pulled this drawer out at one point too far and dropped it. And so even the greatest people can make mistakes. Now, the truth of the matter is it looks bad, but you're not really losing an.

You're not losing the data. But still, I.

Can't even imagine what it was like today that that happened.

What kind of words do you think came out of his way?

He was an incredible gentleman, so I bet he's swore quite a bit.

But that is devastating.

And so what has been the rarest or most beautiful specimen that you've seen?

So I think some of the coolest eggs in the world are belonging to a bird called the Gira cuckoo from South America, and they are these incredible eggs that they lay in big numbers. They're cooperative breeders, and I'm not exactly sure some of their relatives actually have multiple females on the same territory and they'll actually throw eggs out on that, but they'll end up with a mixed

Oooho.

So they have almost like an like an opposite pan patina.

Yes exactly. Oh wow.

So later on the tour, I got a chance to see these bad boys, and they're this lovely minty aqua color like a turmaline blue with white patterns overlaid, and

Of course, these are annis, which are these blackbirds from the tropics, which are cuckoo relatives, and so they're and these are these ones that have these nests that multiple females in the group will lay in day care. Yeah, with the caveat being that apparently there's a older female that'll come along and throw most of the eggs out over time and then lay most of hers in there. But not anyways, what a bitch?

Are there any eggs that you know of that are like so valuable monetarily wise? Like, are there any that are like underglass? And well if I if I told you, yeah, that's true, you would have.

Actually, we have a of a plaster cast downstairs of an elephant bird from Madagascar, which is a bird that was these one of these giant flightless things that was living in Madagascar up until the time the first humans

Okay, so that price checks out. Now, the elephant bird went extinct somewhere between the thirteen hundreds and the eighteen hundreds. Nobody knows, but it was probably because of humans. I think we all pretty much know that. Now. Bigger than a basketball, these huge foot long eggs have sold at auction for more than one hundred thousand dollars, which is pretty eggs expensive. It's a lot of cash to shell out. Okay, I'm gonna stop cracking these yolks. Please don't reject me. Okay.

They were like, oh shit, oh my God, we're rich if we decide to sell it, but mostly we're gonna hang on to it because it's cool for science and stuff.

I think that's what they said. That's a lot of money for it.

But I think how many omelets. Those things would have mazed?

So many omelets, which is probably why they're extinct.

Exactly right.

What's the biggest egg you have ever cracked? I once tried to eat an emu egg and it required a hack.

Saw was that any good?

It was very rich, it was huge, it was overwhelming. But we whipped it up and made an omelet and it was like the most buttery, kind of fatty, tasty one. But it was like huge. It looked like a giant avocado.

Yeah. So I have to admit that most of my time has been spent with chicken eggs in terms of actually cooking and eating. So I'm trying to think if I've ever actually I think I ever have actually eating another bird's egg species, not even I have kind a duck or Yeah.

Really, I once had deviled quails eggs, which was weird. I just felt like a giant because they're so little. But how do you take your eggs over?

Easy?

So does that mean runny yolk?

Yeah?

Why does that gross me out? But it doesn't gross other people out? Should I be grossed out?

It's supposed to soak up what's what's left in the plate. If you've got potatoes in the plate, it like makes the potatoes taste better.

I don't know why. I don't know why. There's something that grosses me out about it. Okay, So another thing that grosses people out the calaisa. Now these two coily white threads that are attached to the yolk. What are they? What are they? Okay, there's just nothing much, just ropes of protein. They're actually markers of a fresh egg since they kind of disappear as it ages. But why are they there, like tiny slimy party streamers. Well, they suspend the yolk in the middle of the egg, kind of

The yolk is the is what it's going to eat.

Okay, Yeah, so that's that would be the baby chick's food. So I should be okay with eating that, right, right.

Yeah, except that, of course, that's the stuff that my pediatrician was always worried about every other.

Year, the cholesterol and stuff. When you're cracking hard boiled eggs, Do you have a better strategy because you understand the mechanics and the anatomy of eggs.

No, that's one of those things that you just go for literally, like I think, and it's a satisfying thing because it's in the end you have something like solid in your hand that you can eat.

Okay, So if you're like, I'm a grown ass person and I can't boil eggs right, well, number one, why are you reciting passages from my diary? And two I just looked up some tips and apparently here are some pointers. According to French chef Jacques Pepin, Okay, take a thumbtach if you got one, puncture the egg in the round butt end right, and then gently boil them not too high, for ten minutes. Drain you kind of very gingerly, crack the shells, but keep them on, and then submerge in

I think actually cracking raw eggs is more of an artistic technique that I've never fully developed.

I know the people that can do one in each hand.

Yeah, those people, It's like, how do you learn that?

Masters? They should be oologists to be honest, they need to take up the term as well. Now, how many eggs do you guys have at the Field Museum in collections?

So the actual number is probably on the order of about one hundred thousand.

Oh my god.

But see, so the interesting thing about eggs is in collections like this is not the number of eggs individually. It's a number of sets of eggs. And so we have about twenty thousand sets of eggs, which means that the eggs are laying by a given female at a given time. And there's what's called clutch size, which is how many eggs they've laid for that nest. And that's actually a truly interesting thing about avian biology because there's

Birds was two right, which is, like you said.

That's probably why there's no elephant birds left if you think about it. Ostriches are another big flightless bird, and they have clutch sizes where a single actually multiple females lay in the same nest, but they'll be upwards of twenty eggs in the nest because these female lays ten to eleven and they're basically just hedging their bets with respect to producing their young because a lot of them are going to get picked off by predators over time.

Ooh, okay, quick aside, What does an ostrich nest look like? I bet it's like an elaborately woven popisan chair, swirl of delicate wicker holding all these eggy treasures. Now I looked it up and what It's just a sloppy pile of eggs on the ground and a communal pile at that. There's no weaving, there's no mud structure, no bird spun basket. It's just it is the laziest shit you have ever seen. Like if you and four of your housemates folded your athletic socks into balls and then tossed them all in

The Ostrich actually lays them sitting down. Yeah, for the most part. But they are really thick and like they're used by bushmen of the Kalahari to store water in.

Oh my gosh, what a cool purse. I mean talking about a clutch that would be quite an evening clutch. So they call little evening handbags. You're like to nah, it's an.

Egg I'd be willing to bet that's been done.

Just FOI, Yes it has been done. So Etsy, Pinterest, eBay all just brimming with Ostrich egg purses, usually starting around several thousand dollars. But I did find one woman in Hemet, California who has a side hustle called egg bags dot Com. She makes them for three hundred and fifty dollars roughly because she's just really drawn to the art of egg decor. It seems so. If you wanted to get yourself something very ornately fancy, just to like toss in some chapsticks a granola bar, the keys to

Myths about eggs.

Bunnies don't lay them despite Easter.

They don't. That's absolutely true.

Do you love springtime because of the egg imagery or are you like, come on, guys, no.

Because it gets really weird because of the bunny aspect of it. I think that confuses the biology. I think. I think Easter egg hunting is great. I think Easter egg dying is great. The whole buddy aspect of it really gets messed up. Right, So I don't know how that happened.

Okay, I'm gonna tell you right now to your faces how it happened. So well, it's debated but some historians think Easter came from the Germanic mythological goddess of springtime, oh Wester, who may have healed a wounded bird that she found in the woods by changing it into a bunny, and then the bunny was like, dude, thank you and laid her an egg because the buddy was like, I

See that's cool because they're just trying to be birds, right, Well.

How did they even how did that even come about?

That's a good question if from an evolutionary standpoint, it would be potentially a really retained characteristic from their ancet with.

Reptiles, And now reptiles, were they the og when it comes to egg laying? And then I mean because birds reptiles similar evolutionary pathway dinosaurs.

I mean birds are dinosaurs.

Yeah, birds are dinosaurs.

So we're looking at just I think birds are just better dinosaurs.

I think, I mean they It's funny because for so long it's like dinosaurs are extinct and they're like, no, they're not. There's a pigeon done, It's boom. Also, where do pigeons have nests?

They nest on little ledges and stuff. But that's a really great observation because as many pigeons as there are in like the city of Chicago, I almost never see a nest. And then the other thing is that so they're that group of birds. So the columbu day, the family that they belong to, they lay clutches of two. That's the only the total number. And so you would think, like, if you're laying two eggs on a ledge, any predator could come down and eat those things. Yeah, and they're

I don't know.

I have a theory that maybe they just asexually bud and a feather falls off and then a whole other pigeon sprouts around it.

And the only thing I would say that our argues against that is I could show you pigeon eggs in our collections.

So we know they do it.

Dang it.

There was once I lived in an apartment building and a pigeon got inside, and I did see a pigeon build a nest inside on the carpet, and I told my landlords. I was like, yo, there's a pigeon like inside, like on the carpet, and they're like, leave it alone, and I was like, what about bird mites? I feel like we need to worry about that, Like can we scoot it? So I did see one pigeon nest once, but it was like one foot away from my door, inside on a carpet, and that it was just all kinds of wrong.

And did you see any pigeon mites?

No, but I think I moved before. Last thing I needed was bird cooties. In case you think I'm five and just slandering birds. Bird cooties are an actual thing, I promise. So World War One soldiers they took the Melee word for lice, which was kutu, and they mashed it with this species coot thought to be real dirty birds.

Now.

The other couple said they would rather have been haunted by a dozen poultergeists than contend with invisible biting things. So if you see a pigeon in your house, do you point to the door or a window because they can fly?

You don't know, that's a whole not you should. You can do a whole nother ology on parasitology.

Because birds have mites.

Oh, we actually go into the field now and we do an active job of trying to collect them because they're they're co evolving with the birds essentially, and so there's some really interesting questions you can ask with mites.

Do you get a lot of gifts that have eggs on them? To people? Say I saw this and I thought of you.

I do, because we did a book of eggs, and so people kind of know that I've worked.

Yeah, how many books about eggs do you own? In reference?

So I benefit by being in a place that has a where our bird library is right down the hall, and that means I don't have to buy as many books on eggs. I can actually just go down and surreptitiously grab them off the shelf and then check them out, and then the librarians have to come track me down to get them back.

You're like, you're not too far though, I mean, and who's going to make better use of a book about eggs than you?

Well, that's my argument exactly, but when somebody else wants it, they need to be able to find me.

Did you ever have to do the thing in high school where they gave you an egg and they're like, don't break it. This is what parenthood is like. Do they ever make you do that?

Oh?

I never did that.

Yeah they would. I think they used to do that to scare to scare teenagers away from like becoming parents too early, as they'd be like, you have to take care of this egg for a week, and if you break it, you fail or whatever. So I just looked this up, and in some schools now they give you a ten pound sack of flour because it's similar, I guess, to carrying around an actual baby, if the baby were perfectly still and silent and only emitted soft puffs of

So know now that you mentioned that, the one thing I remember like that was DeCamp and doing egg tosses.

Oh right, It's.

Like I was always one of those kids that didn't want to break the egg. Did not want to do it. Some kids didn't care. I did not want to break the egg.

You had an early appreciation. Now, if you bought a fertilized chicken egg, like from Whole Foods because you believed that for some reason, fertilized chicken eggs were better, could you take it home, put it on a heating blanket, and have some chicks in a couple of weeks?

Good question. I don't know, Yeah, and I wouldn't want to find out. Actually, to be honest with you, what do you do? Yeah, yeah, exactly if it worked, and I wouldn't buy fertilized chicken eggs.

Yeah, what is what is the difference of when you're eating an egg being fertilized or not.

It could be taste or something I think, but again I don't have any intention of finding out anytimes I.

Look this up. And apparently you can hatch chickens from fertilized eggs from like Trader Joe's, provided they're pretty fresh and actually fertilized. So how can you tell? Okay, let's get into some super quick egg anatomy. Okay, So the egg white or albumen is mostly water and some protein and it serves to protect and feed the chicky. Now, the yolk is higher in protein and fat and it really nourishes the growing baby berb. And the color of a yolk can really vary depending on what a bird

Oh?

Also, the duck egg was fertile and the baby duck has been developing for two to three weeks. It has like bones and a beak and stuff, just all boiled and eaten. But a reminder, lobster was once served as prison food because the idea of eating a sea cockroach was considered disgusting and punishment. And I don't even know what's in nacho cheese, but I could eat it all day long. And ballute apparently has its roots in luxury too, And I read that it is the street food in

Yes, you can?

Okay, some of them are for my dad. Hi Dad. But before we get to your questions, a quick word about sponsors of the show, and since this is an Encore presentation. Back in twenty eighteen, we didn't have sponsors and we weren't able to donate to causes, but now we can so in honor of doctor John Bates, we're sending some cash to the Field Museum to continue their excellent education and outreach and research, and that was made

As Jumpers.

The chicken, chicken or the egg? What came first?

Yeah, good question.

I mean, I guess the egg.

Well, it's just funny because if you look at chicken as a common name for Gallus gallas, which is a bird, and dinosaurs, the ancestors of chickens, laid eggs, then the egg came before the chicken.

Is we figured it out?

There we go.

God, everything in my life is so much easier now.

I get a lot of letters about that.

I well, and you know what, I'll be like, why don't you console the noologist? I have one. He's right here. Jerry Davis wants to know are there any eggs that are poisonous to eat?

Wow, that's an interesting question.

I don't know the.

Quick answer to that's no, not that I can think of. We were just talking about some of the today, some of the other you know, like there's a bird that was found to be poisonous in New Guinea called a pit of hooy But it's it's because it eats beetles and is able to sequester the poisons. But it's eggs I don't think would be poisonous.

Oh, good to know. Way to go, bibba hooey. Pit of hooyes, by the way, look like pretty just russet colored songbirds, like ones you'd seen in the garden. But they use the same toxin as poisoned dart frogs, so they're kind of like if you found out your aunt was an assassin. But who are you? Whoey bita hooey pit whoy Spencer Tod wants to know is a breakfast chicken egg really only one cell?

Yes?

Really, yep, it's one cell. Where's the nucleus and the ribosomes and the organelles and stuff.

So they're they're there, and I mean this is like the.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense because like any egg that a female of any species produces, one.

Cell is one cell.

Oh that's weird.

Oh I've never thought about that. That's awesome. Brooke Boson wants to know what's the smallest egg in the world.

Is it a hummingbird, It'll be one of the hummingbirds, and there are enough small hummingbirds that probably have similar sized eggs. The smallest hummingbird in the world is a bee hummingbird from Cuba. And you know, the amazing thing there is they have clutch sizes of two and the egg of a bee hummingbird would take up a large amount of the you know, as we said, it's one cell, and it's a large amount of the internal space in a female bee hummingbird.

So is it just like the size of a tic tac bigger than it?

Actually looks very much like a tictac. That's exactly what you think.

I got a chance to see some on the Vault tour and yep, they're just like a scoch, larger than a tic tac, but way smaller than a mento. They are zero percent refreshing. Do not eat them on a date.

And so here are the chicklets. That's a black chin hummingbird from Arizona.

Oh my gosh, I'm definitely eaten breath mints larger than that exactly. Oh my god, how cute and tiny.

Which reminds me of an old joke from when I was a kid, which was, what did the hummingbirds say when he laid an ostrich egg? W late an ostrich egg?

What out?

That actually segues perfectly into Katie Copp's question. Here's a stupid question. Just laying an egg hurt? Like it hurts for a woman human woman to give birth, but we don't do it a few times a week.

Yeah. I was actually looking as I prepped for this. And you know, our modern chickens we eat five billion eggs a year in the US alone. Wow, and the average chicken produces like three hundred and sixty or something.

Yeah, like almost daily?

Right, yeah, I mean.

Just like it's incredible, and so does it hurt? I mean, I don't know. It's not the same as childbirth in humans?

Right?

We have in childbirth we have real messed up pelvis is like our pelvis is a are not? Are not so great? See the Ologies episodes on primatology and Kynecology for more on that. Did you ever see the movie cool Hand, Luke?

Oh gosh, you know, yeah, yes you did.

What do you think I like Cool Hand Lukes?

What about the egg eating part?

Yeah? It it never bothered me.

Really, nobody ever eats fifty eggs. Hey, baby luguts, we got a bed here. My boss said he can make fifty eggs. He ate fifty eggs.

Just thinking about that sometimes when I make like a lot of like a clutch if you will, of hard boiled eggs, sometimes I think about that and I think, oh.

God, see I think Rocky's the same way where he comes in after the run, and just like so, I would never do that.

The funny thing is, if you asked me to eat an undercooked egg, a raw egg, I'd be like, absolutely no, get out of my face. But if you ask me to eat cookie dough which contains them, I'm like, sign me up. I'm there right, what's the deal.

It's completely illogical, mind never mattered.

Todd McLaren actually asks what's your favorite egg art? Ukrainian Easter egg, Madieira lace egg, faberge egg.

Oh. I think those Ukrainian eggs are like incredible, really beautiful, really amazing pieces of artwork.

So these Ukrainian eggs or psunka are ornately detailed using melted beeswax, and they just keep dunking them and die over and over again. And yes, there is a museum to Pazanka eggs in Eastern Europe in case you're into that. Now onto a very special question from someone who is technically your grandpod Larry Ward aka my Pops. He wants to know how are snake eggs incubated? Does the mom or dad snakes sit on them?

Yeah? They do. Actually the yeah, they provide some bit. But it's funny because that's a good question. Actually we need a herpetologist. Yeah, in the sense that because they're ecto terms.

So for this I brought out the big guns and buy guns, I mean snakes, and I reached out to doctor David Stein of the herpetology episode aka Alongside Wild on Twitter, and he responded swiftly and with informational precision. He said, not all snakes lay eggs, but of those two, the vast majority lay them and leave. They just incubate on their own. Pythons are a notable exception. They coil around the eggs and they can use muscle contractions to

Yeah, that's a I mean, some of it's just individual variation. And so there's some kind of genetic variation in the DNA. Well, I guess the DNA that's producing the compounds that are being deposited on the shells eventually. But there are these birds, like these common mirrors, where they've actually evolved the capacity.

Wow.

And they're still trying to do the research. So they're trying to figure out whether females lay the same kind of eggs from year to year. Oh so whether that's a genetically encoded pattern. And those are really interesting questions.

That's great.

I never even thought about that. When you see speckled eggs that maybe look like granite, Yeah, are those carbon copies of each other every time, or are the speckles in different places.

I used to think that it probably was. There was probably a lot of variation that was genetically based. It may very well be that most of it's just randomly involved with how fast they're passing through the kloaca at the time, and you know when they come out. It's literally just something different every time, and the birds can imprint on it and then find it the next time.

Wow, that's so fascinating. Also fascinating, of course how people treat and eat their eggs all over the globe. I'm told that also you don't have to refrigerate eggs in Europe. You just leave your eggs on the counter. Those Europeans, I know, they leave their butter on the counter. They

No, I mean, I bet I. When I was working in Brazil the first time, people used to leave mayonnaise and refrigerated out in the forest.

Oh hell no.

And after a while I started eating it. It was fine.

Did you lose a lot of weight just because you were constantly sick?

No?

Really? Now, speaking of salmonilla, is that something that you worry about?

Yes?

Okay?

Is that now?

Salmonilla it comes maybe from an infected bird, It comes right down down the old poop shoot, and then you need to wash the eggs to avoid the salmonilla, right, Yeah, And I.

Think that that That's one thing that's kind of amazing about industry is how well they're able to actually keep those things from being issues, because they really I mean, when there's a salmonilla outbreak these days, it's kind of stunning how quickly we know about it, and how quickly in most cases they figure out exactly where they come from.

I know, isn't it crazy? Yes, salmonilla I just found this out. Is the same genus and bacteria that causes typhoid fever, and of course just a whole bunch of food poisoning. Now it can get on the eggs when it passes through the oviduct of a chicken, or in the egg as it's forming. Now, not all chickens have salmonilla, and some will show signs like lethargy if they do have it. Now, before you go hatching a crate of

Here, doctor Salmon, we have bestowed you with a legacy for generations. A very confusing fish sounding disease of the chicken butt that scares people away from cookie dough also if you're like a real cookie dough trollop like myself, just go ahead and make it with pasteurized eggs. Feel free to eat the whole bowl. Does anything in John's work cause him to eat entire salad bowls filled with raw cookies?

What is the.

Most annoying thing about eggs or your job?

Well, with eggs, I would say it's, uh, keeping track of them. So so you have a clutch, but you have four or five eggs in that clutch, and so you've got to figure out you know, they number them all and so you just got to be careful with respect to getting things mixed up and things and then you don't have anything else to go on if things do get mixed up.

Oof. Yeah, that's true. I mean you can't put a little number on them, or they do.

Put little numbers on them. But let's say there are a bunch of little numbers and they were put on a one hundred and twenty years ago. It's possible that you could have a hard time deciphering what was what was done.

Do you find that the notes are like very poetically descriptive more so than they would be these days?

Not?

Really, it's the more what's beautiful about them is a different handwriting. Oh, people had so much better handwriting.

I did notice this when I was looking through and swooning over some field note calligraphy among the vintage eggstacs. I mean that font a good handwriting.

Yep.

I wonder what would do you think he was amateur?

Do you think he was pro he was an amateur?

Really?

Yeah, all these guys were amateurs. Almost all the egg collecting was done by amateurs. That's really amazing.

Wow, and they call themselves oologists. Yeah, and yet you've edited a book about X yep.

And I'm not calling myself on the loss.

Oh my god.

Oh yeah.

It's just pathologically.

Humble, just beautiful, cursive and things in ways that nobody would do today.

God, we got to get back into that. I feel like, you know, because those are the original fonts.

Maybe they'll make some computer programs that'll do it, and I can actually effectively do some of that, but it's not going to be me by handwriting.

He's so funny. Field biologists had to take like Fountain pen courses, you know, like, we got to keep it up, guys.

There's no doubt that one of the things we should do is take printing courses, and I'm exhibit a of somebody who is not good at that. And I have a immense amount of respect for my colleagues that actually write impeccable scientific field notes and labels and things.

I'm looking at some handwriting you have over here.

No, I got not bad. I could tell you stories. Let us write this for you.

Oh, that's one way to get out of doing work. That's like someone asked you to do the dishes, so you break a dish. You never get asked to do the dishes again.

Except in this case. It's like, I really wish I.

Could do it.

Well, I can't type, So you can learn to print, and I'll learn how to type. What do you love the most about eggs?

I mean just that there's such an important part of the biology of birds. I think that's the most interesting thing to me. And the other thing is that, actually, with all the birds in this world, and there are some ten thousand, eight hundred species, we probably don't know anything about the eggs of upwards of thirty to forty percent of the species. Maybe that's crazy, It is kind of interesting. So there's a lot we don't know about eggs.

There's so many mysteries. And what about your job. What's your favorite thing about your job?

Well, my favorite thing about my job is learning new things and getting to work with a group of organisms that I love and really kind of getting paid for my to do my avocation.

So you're a professional bird nerd.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean that's the dream for a burder is to be like you get that's like making the major leagues.

Oh yeah, you know what I mean. I tell I tell students that that I you know, I started out wanting to be a I was a pre med and I took a cell biology course and I realized, really, somebody might pay me to actually study birds the rest of my life.

So you're like veering off.

It was it was an easy veer.

Now, if you would have told yourself a young birder that you would get to do this for a living, would you have just been so stoked?

Yeah?

I mean I grew up my dad was a birdwatcher and a very active birdwatcher, and I actually started burning because my brother was four years older, and I realized, if I wanted to spend any time with the two of them, I've better learned something about birds.

Ah.

So That's how I got interested in it, and I just even back then, I fell in love with the idea of being able to study birds up close and in those you know, in that kind of way.

And now you get to study them every day yep, and things that come out of them yep, inside him, yeah, and things that you know that last like that. Well, I think that your only job left is to come to terms with the fact that you're an oologist. I think you need to accept that.

To see I could put that on my door and on my cards and stuff. That's just not going to happen.

There's imposter syndrome is everywhere. I like, I don't know if I know enough. And you're like, you wrote a book about eggs, what more do you want? You manage collection of one hundred thousand eggs?

But I think that that the notion of yeah, I mean, how many ologists can you actually be? So, so at what point in time will you answer? You know, because I want to be an ornithologist. I like the fact that I study birds, right, you.

Can be more than one. I'm Italian, I'm also English, you know what I mean, And you could be all kinds of things. So you I mean I live in La everyone's a hyphenate yoga instructor, actor, life coach, so I hereby proclaimed that you're an oologist.

Fair enough.

Yay, thank you so much for doing this was so fun, my pleasure. I could ask you a million egg questions all day.

You'll have to come back and taculate.

Hologya which is you?

So once again, doctor John Bates of the wonderful Field Museum of Chicago. Now, if you like this podcast and the Field Museum, you should definitely check out if you haven't already, the Brain Scoop, which is the Field Museum's web series hosted by the amazing Emily Grasley. She is a wonderful person and a great science communicator, so you might enjoy those. Also, those videos are family friendly, so you can watch those with your kids all you want.

Hey, maybe I hear the blues and call in toss salads and scrambled eggs, and maybe I seem have been confused. Yeah maybe, but I got you fagged. But I don't know what isn't with the tot nalads and scramble a