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It’s really easy to crush an egg in your hands, isn’t it? |
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But what if wanted to crack an egg, and you were a bird?
It’d be very hard, wouldn’t it?
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Well here’s one bird that has no problem doing just that – it’s the Egyptian egg-eating vulture – also known as the pharoah’s chicken.
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That’s because it looks a bit like a scruffy chicken, doesn’t it?
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You might think that it uses its long beak to peck into the egg.
But no – it has a much better technique! |
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It picks up the egg in its beak and drops it to the floor, to break into it, and tuck in that way.
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Now check this out – it’s an ostrich egg!
It’s huge, and can hold the weight of Stephen and Gail (total 114kg) if they stand on it.
In fact, Stephen’s standing on the egg in this picture!
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Ostrich eggs are the strongest eggs in the world.
It would take 40 minutes to hard boil one, and you could fit 24 chicken eggs inside one!
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Gail proved that it wasn’t a trick egg by cracking it into a bowl.
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The Egyptian egg-eating vulture loves nothing more than tucking into the eggs of other birds. But can it get into an ostrich egg?
Gail and Stephen put it to the test!
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The vulture can’t pick the egg up with its mouth – it’s too big. So how does it do it?
Well, it’s all to do with pebbles.
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These birds will actually walk up to 40m from an abandoned egg just to find the perfect pebble – double the length of the Brilliant Creatures studio!
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Once they’ve found the perfect pebble, the vulture picks it up with its beak…
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…and uses it as a tool to crack it onto the egg, in the same position repeatedly.
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The Egyptian egg-eating vulture is one of the only birds in the world to use tools like this, making it one brainy bird! |
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If the egg is hit enough times, it cracks and the vulture can eat.
A real cracker, eh?
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