Citizen Science: How Big is a Bird Egg?

emu egg in ostrich eggbot

While talking about egg sizes in the context of the Eggbot project, we realized that while we have access to a few samples, we do not have a good understanding of the normal variation in the sizes of various bird eggs.

The sizes of chicken eggs are well understood and well regulated, but for other types of bird eggs (like the emu egg above) the sizes are not necessarily so standard. If you have access to other types of eggs or eggshells, we’d like your help in gathering data about the size and variation in these other types of eggs.

We’ve set up a survey form to collect egg size data and we plan to post about our results once we have collected enough data.

Thank you!

3 thoughts on “Citizen Science: How Big is a Bird Egg?

  1. That shouldn’t be crazy difficult, notice how long the egg by how far you have to move the pen arm down the chassis, then note at what height the pen hits the egg. Now you have 2 radii, then compute the volume (assume egg is circular in cross section).
    A much easier method is to put the egg in water in a graduated cylinder. Volume after – volume before = volume of egg.

  2. it seems like Emu egg size would be something measured cataloged and studied by scientists somewhere already. Has anyone looked for papers written about Emu egg size?

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