[jammaloo]

On August 22, 1994, David Donoghue threw an egg out of a helicopter onto a golf course in the UK, from a height of 213 meters (700 feet). He now has the record for the longest egg drop without breaking in the world (all without an outside structure for added protection!). https://www.scienceworld.ca/resource/egg-drop/

Eggs are evolutionarily designed to survive falling out of nests and perches. You assume that the egg is dropping onto a hard surface, but there is no mention of that in the puzzle.

That's even assuming it's a chicken egg, but other eggs may be more resilient. It may not even be a biological egg, but an artifically designed egg, that is resilient to drops onto harder surfaces.

[thedailymail]

I bet a human egg would survive undamaged even when dropped from 30,000 feet.

(Following Haldane's observation that "You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes.")

[dilawar]

Thanks for quoting Haldane. I need to reread that excellent essay "on being the right size".

[the_af]

> Eggs are evolutionarily designed to survive falling out of nests and perches.

I wonder about this. Realistically, what fate awaits the egg that dropped from the nest in the tree branch, even if it survives the fall?

[Someone]

I wonder about that, too, and Google gives me lots of items that seem to debunk that, for example https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318263505_Avian_egg..., which to my amateur eye seems a rather recent and extensive study. It starts with

“Hypotheses proposed for the adaptive function of egg shape typically invoke a decrease in egg loss for cliff-nesting birds laying conical eggs that roll in a tight circle; an increase in incubation efficiency when egg shape is associated with the number of eggs in a clutch; or other advantages related to strength, diet, and development. For example, spherical eggs might be advantageous because the sphere is uniformly strong and would be robust to incidental damage in the nest.

Spherical eggs, with their minimal surface-area-to-volume ratio, also require the least amount of shell material for a given volume and possibly optimize gas exchange by providing a large surface area for pores. In contrast, conical eggs may be beneficial because they can accommodate an increased concentration of pores at the blunt end, creating a specialized respiratory site for accelerated neural development in precocial birds. Moreover, conical eggs may protect the blunt end (from which chicks usually hatch) from debris contamination or, in colonial breeders, increase resistance to impacts because a larger proportion of the eggshell is in contact with the substrate. Finally, it has also been proposed that adaptations for flight influence egg shape indirectly through the morphology of the pelvis, abdomen, or oviduct.”

and concludes

“Our macroevolutionary analyses suggest that birds adapted for high-powered flight may maximize egg size by increasing egg asymmetry and/or ellipticity, while maintaining a streamlined body plan”

It doesn’t even mention “better protection against drops”.

[niccl]

plus, there's a cost to the parent in making the egg shell arbitrarily drop-proof, so there's a balance of resources required to survive drop versus genetic benefit of surviving the drop

[Forgeties79]

Nature doesn’t chase the better option. It selects out the options that aren’t good enough to survive.

[kgwgk]

Nature doesn’t chase anything. Things happen.

Arguably surviving may happen less often for the shock-proof egg than for the egg that is better in some alternative aspect (including quantity).

(Maybe the hard egg has other advantages though. Could also be used to produce a better skeleton.)

[Forgeties79]

That’s exactly what I said. “Selects out” is the terminology used when discussing evolution. It’s not an active “decision,” it’s a thing that happens. “Natural selection.”

[kgwgk]

Ok. But what does that mean in the context of the comment that you replied to? (Which doesn’t talk about decisions or nature chasing things, at least as it stands now.)

Is a harder shell which has higher costs than benefits selected out? Maybe we’re all repeating the same thing.

[the_af]

I would understand the selective advantage if it made the egg shell more resistant to accidental breaking within the nest. But for birds that nest in tree branches or perches, what advantage is there for an egg resisting a fall without breaking? That egg is lost anyway; for most bird and egg shapes, there's no way to bring it back to the nest.

[Forgeties79]

> what advantage is there

So this is a pretty common mistake people make when discussing evolution. It’s not about what is advantageous, it’s about what survives the selection process. A combination of odds that play out.

Our eyes are not advantageous or chosen by evolution, our eyes were just acceptable enough for us to survive while other variations were not. There was no decision or work/progress towards an end goal. A creature developed along a certain line by chance, the situation in nature was such that they survived and passed on that trait, while others did not. Natural selection in action.

[robocat]

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/why-are-...

Off topic, but indirectly supports your point.