This click-bait quiz is fun. Check out the answer.
Which bird lays the largest egg relative to its body size?
- Eagle?
- Kiwi?
- Ostrich?
- Emu?
The ostrich is the largest bird in the world and it lays the largest egg of any bird species. If you look at egg size relative to the size of the bird that lays it, however, a different feathered, flightless creature comes out on top — the kiwi bird of New Zealand.
Kiwis’ habits and physical characteristics make them unbird-like in many ways. Sometimes they are referred to as an honorary mammal.
Source: Kiwis for Kiwis. Link. According to the Kiwi Trust, the egg of the kiwi bird is about 20 percent of a female kiwi’s body weight. For comparison, an ostrich egg is only about 2 percent of its mother’s body weight. It’s not clear why exactly the kiwi lays such a huge egg, but its size apparently gives kiwi chicks an advantage.
The Kiwi Trust explains a kiwi egg is about 65 percent yolk, which provides so much nutrition in the shell that chicks can basically sustain themselves as soon as they hatch.