
Cracking the mystery of egg shape - ohjeez
https://vis.sciencemag.org/eggs/
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putzdown
This article is a great example of fun and engaging presentation, but alas
spoiled by poor writing. The top 3/4 of the article, which explains the
question and makes you care about it, is clear and exciting. It's the sort of
page you want to show your friends and your kids. But the ending—the
explanation of the solution—falls flat. I challenge anyone to reach the end of
this article with a clear understanding of what the scientists mentioned in
the article actually concluded.

The problem begins with the paragraph, "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." The paragraphs that follow
this one do a poor job of explaining the model. What the author is trying to
say, I think, is that the females of strong fliers, because they have narrow
bodies, have narrow oviducts and therefore narrow (and pointy) eggs. That
hardly seems an earth (or egg) shattering conclusion. But then we have this:
"But it also turns out that egg shape is a balance between two pressures..." a
sentence I can't find the significance of. And this fun fact: "If you
carefully remove the shell from the membrane, an egg will still retain its
shape." Does "egg" there refer to the shell, the membrane, or something else?
Clearer, I think, would have been: "If you carefully remove the shell from the
membrane, the remaining egg even without the shell will still retain its
shape." By the end, I'm left with a cracked and mushy solution to a beautiful
and pristine problem.

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systematical
I wanted to read that then the trying too hard ui made it impossible... at
least on mobile.

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stinos
That's too bad, on desktop it's pretty good. Though not really necessary, I
mean as far as I can tell it doesn't add anything functional.

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systematical
They did a good job for sure, functions the exact same on desktop as mobile
now that I am back home. But I just want information in linear and boring
manner.

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Dinachio
Right now I'm cracking the mystery behind the presentation of this page. A lot
of things is going on there

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dreamcompiler
I have mixed feelings about this presentation style. On the one hand, it takes
advantage of the computer medium nicely. On the other, it seems very content-
sparse. It grabs attention, but it doesn't seem to convey much information.

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ycombonator
Fascinating. love the occasional HN insights.

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dmolony
That web site is all flashy presentation, I couldn't tell if there was any
actual information hidden amongst the animations.

TLDR anyone?

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marco_salvatori
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.

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Terretta
Ha, literal "chicken and egg" framing.

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.

