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Uncategorized Thursday, April 26th 2012 at 4:07 pm

Hen Gives Birth to Live Chick Without the Egg

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Over in Sri Lanka, a hen gave birth to a live chick. You might recall something about how hens lay eggs, which they then incubate outside of their body, and that they don’t give birth to live anythings at all.

Unfortunately, the hen died, but the chick is fully formed and completely healthy. The explanation for the “live” birth is a fairly simple one; a veterinarian examined the hen and found that the chick’s egg was fertilized inside the hen, but then stayed inside the hen’s body until it hatched. The egg was incubated for 21 days inside the hen before it hatched. As one may have guessed, the hen died from internal wounds.

Feel free to make however many chicken or the egg jokes you feel this news tidbit requires, but also keep in mind that if we’re witnessing some new stage of evolution where chickens give live birth, we’re either entering a future without delicious breakfast materials, or one where we kill chickens to extract the eggs from inside their bodies.

(via BBC News)

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  • Anthony Neves

    Mmmmm. Fresh eggs …

  • NaTaS

    Well as heavy as they are with the facts in Sri Lanka…  I’m just thinking someone killed a chicken by shoving a chic up into it and then calling everyone over “HEY Watch this!  it’s giving birth to a Live Chicken!”

  • http://profiles.google.com/joebbowers Joe Bowers

    I hadn’t considered the culinary implications, interesting.

  • ange

    i’m doubting that this is a true story. according to my studies of chicken embryo development, an embryo will die if it’s temperature reaches or exceeds 105 degrees farenhiet. the body temperature of a hen is 107 degrees farenhiet. also, the egg requires turning to prevent the embryo from sticking to the shell membrane. inside a chickens body the egg cannot be turned. i also would be wondering how the embryo got enough oxygen and avoided drowning from too much humidity while inside a hen’s body. seems more likely that someone shoved a chick or a hatching egg into a hen to produce this so called event.

  • TTTT

    Is this possible with some sort of in-vitro fertilization (done by a human) combined with closing off the chicken’s equivalent of a Fallopian tube(again done bu humans)?

    Any biologists have an answer? Only other way would be an evolutionary anomaly that allowed for self insemination/asexual reproduction, which seems incredibly odd…… Would be a very clever way to basically create a cool hoax.