Egg incubation

"Brooding" redirects here. For habitual or compulsive engagement in perseverative thought

regarding negative aspects of events and/or situations, see Rumination (psychology).

Incubation is the process by which certain oviparous (egg-laying) animals hatch their eggs; it
also refers to the development of the embryo within the egg under favorable environmental
condition. Multiple and various factors are vital to the incubation of various species of animal. In
many species of reptile for example, no fixed temperature is necessary, but the actual
temperature determines the sex ratio of the offspring. In birds in contrast, the sex of offspring is
genetically determined, but in many species a constant and particular temperature is necessary
for successful incubation. Especially in poultry, the act of sitting on eggs to incubate them is
called brooding.[1] The action or behavioral tendency to sit on a clutch of eggs is also called
broodiness, and most egg-laying breeds of poultry have had this behavior selectively bred out of
them to increase production.[1]

Avian incubation

A wide range of incubation habits is displayed among birds. In warm-blooded species such as
bird species generally, body heat from the brooding patch of the brooding parent provides the
constant temperature.[2] Several groups, notably the megapodes, instead use heat generated from
rotting vegetable material, effectively creating a giant compost heap while crab plovers make
partial use of heat from the sun.[3] The Namaqua sandgrouse of the deserts of southern Africa,
needing to keep its eggs cool during the heat of the day, stands over them drooping its wings to
shade them. The humidity is also critical, because if the air is too dry the egg will lose too much
water to the atmosphere, which can make hatching difficult or impossible. As incubation
proceeds, an egg will normally become lighter, and the air space within the egg will normally
become larger, owing to evaporation from the egg.

Experiments with great tits show that females compensate for the potential effects of differential
heating by moving the eggs homogeneously within the clutch.[4]

In the species that incubate, the work is divided differently between the sexes. Possibly the most
common pattern is that the female does all the incubation, as in the Atlantic canary and the
Indian robin, or most of it, as is typical of falcons. In some species, such as the whooping crane,
the male and the female take turns incubating the egg. In others, such as the cassowaries, only
the male incubates. The male mountain plover incubates the female's first clutch, but if she lays a
second, she incubates it herself. In hoatzins, some birds (mostly males) help their parents
incubate later broods.

The incubation period, the time from the start of uninterrupted incubation to the emergence of
the young, varies from 11 days (some small passerines and the black-billed and yellow-billed
cuckoos) to 85 days (the wandering albatross and the brown kiwi). In these latter, the incubation
is interrupted; the longest uninterrupted period is 64 to 67 days in the emperor penguin. In
general smaller birds tend to hatch faster, but there are exceptions, and cavity nesting birds tend
to have longer incubation periods. It can be an energetically demanding process, with adult
albatrosses losing as much as 83 g of body weight a day.[5] Megapode eggs take from 49 to 90
days depending on the mound and ambient temperature. Even in other birds, ambient
temperatures can lead to variation in incubation period.[6] Normally the egg is incubated outside
the body. However, in one recorded case, the egg incubation occurred entirely within a chicken.
The chick hatched inside and emerged from its mother without the shell, leading to internal
wounds that killed the mother hen.[7]

Embryo development remains suspended until the onset of incubation. The freshly laid eggs of
domestic fowl, ostrich, and several other species can be stored for about two weeks when
maintained under 5 C. Extended periods of suspension have been observed in some marine birds.
[8]
Some species begin incubation with the first egg, causing the young to hatch at different times;
others begin after laying the second egg, so that the third chick will be smaller and more
vulnerable to food shortages. Some start to incubate after the last egg of the clutch, causing the
young to hatch simultaneously.[9]