My take away was that researchers produced evidence that the shape of bird eggs is optimized, around physical characteristics of the parent. I am open to the idea and sceptical. In the context of humans it would be like saying the shape of children is optimized around the physical characteristics of a womans body, as opposed the the supposition that a womans body is optimized around the physical characteristics of children it will have to give birth to.
OK, your idea is parent optimized for physical characteristics of progeny, or in this case, the parent is formed by the egg, not the egg by the parent?
In this article, your point would be, because of laying conical eggs, certain species of birds were able to nest on cliffs. So their eggs not rolling made them cliff dwellers?
And similarly, elliptical eggs optimized their mothers for faster flight?
Not sure. Put like that, I'm thinking it's reasonable the parent trying to roost on the cliff came first.
Children are in fact born well before the level of development other mammals reach before birth and with soft skulls so they can fit through the opening.
The presentation seemed well done and I’m looking in mobile. Basically if you crunch all the data there do seem to be strong correlations between length and bird size on the one hand and shape with flying habits on the other. Various other hypothesized factors don’t seem to play a major role.
> After crunching the numbers, the scientists found the links they’d been looking for: the length of an egg correlates with bird body size. The shape of an egg—how asymmetrical or elliptical it is—relates to flying habits. And the stronger a bird's flight, the more asymmetrical or elliptical its eggs will be.
> What’s the link between flying and egg shape? Birds have a streamlined body plan, and—especially in stronger fliers—their organs are squashed and minimized.