How Does a Chick Breathe Inside Its Shell?
IntroductionHave you ever wondered how an unborn chick breathes inside its shell? Every animal needs oxygen to live, so the chick must get air somehow! When an animal—including a human—inhales, oxygen enters its lungs and is then distributed to all the different parts of its body. The animal's metabolism converts the oxygen into energy. During this process, a waste gas called carbon dioxide is produced. To get rid of it, the carbon dioxide is carried back to the lungs, where it is collected and exhaled. So not only must the chick have a way to let oxygen in, it also must somehow let carbon dioxide out. How does it do this sealed inside an eggshell?
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BackgroundWhen oxygen enters an animal's lungs, it is shuttled and distributed by the bloodstream. It is also the bloodstream that carries carbon dioxide back to the lungs to be breathed out. Animals that grow inside their mothers, like humans, get their oxygen from their directly mothers. The blood stream of the baby animal and the mother are connected via an umbilical cord, which allows the baby to collect oxygen that his or her mother breathes in as well as use the mother's lungs to expel the carbon dioxide. How do animals, such as chickens, which develop inside an egg outside of their mothers' bodies and therefore do not have umbilical cords, take in oxygen and get rid of carbon dioxide? Bird and reptile eggs have a hard shell. Directly under the shell are two membranes. Between the membranes is a small air cell, also called an air sack, filled with oxygen. As the animal develops it uses the oxygen, which must be replenished, and it also has to release carbon dioxide. How does this happen? Well, if you examine a chicken egg carefully with a magnifying glass, you'll see that there are tiny little holes, called pores, in the shell. In this activity, we'll see how those work to let the developing chick breathe.
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Extra: Do fresh eggs and aged eggs behave similarly? Buy a dozen eggs whose expiration date is at least two weeks away. Try this activity with half of the eggs right away. Let the other six eggs age in the refrigerator for two weeks. Repeat the activity with the aged eggs. How does the data compare between the fresh and the aged eggs?
Extra: If pores in the chicken egg's shell allow materials to cross back and forth between the inside of the egg and the outside environment, then the air inside the egg could be replaced by water, and water is heavier than air. Using a scale that can distinguish changes as small as 0.1 gram, such as a triple-beam balance or high-quality electronic kitchen scale, weigh some eggs, then have an adult help you hard-boil them and weigh the eggs again. Did the eggs change weight? If so, how did they change weight? What does this say about the ability of the chicken egg to allow water to cross its shell?
Observations and ResultsDid all of the eggs have at least a few small blue dots on the inside of their shells? Were the dots mostly clustered in one or a few areas on the inside of each shell? Directly under the chicken egg's shell are two membranes. When the eggs are laid by the mother they are warmer than the air, and as they cool the material inside the egg shrinks a little bit. This shrinkage is what pulls the two membranes apart, leaving behind the small air sack that is filled with oxygen. As the developing chick grows it uses the oxygen from the air sack and replaces it with carbon dioxide. The tiny pores in the shell allow the carbon dioxide to escape and fresh air to get in. The chicken egg has more than 7,000 pores in its shell to allow this to happen! These pores also allow water to go through the shell, which is why the dye appears as small dots on the inside of the shell, often clustered in certain areas, and why an egg after being hard-boiled would weigh slightly more than when it was raw. Also, freshly laid eggs do not allow water to penetrate as well as older, commercial eggs do, so fewer blue spots will probably be visible on the inside of fresher eggs compared with older ones.
Cleanup
More to ExploreRespiratory System: Oxygen Delivery System from The Franklin InstituteYour Lungs & Respiratory System from KidsHealth The Parts of the Egg from 4-H Virtual Farm How Does a Chick Breathe Inside Its Shell? from Science Buddies CreditsTeisha Rowland, PhD, Science Buddies
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Key Concepts
Biology, respiration, porosity, food science
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