Why do hens lay eggs even if they’re unfertilized? Isn’t that a waste of resources?
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You can compare the eggs a hen lays to a woman’s period.
The body naturally makes the egg to be fertilised. Rooster or not, a hen lays a bunch of them during a season to hatch them into chicks. The fertilisation doesn’t always happen
If you think that this “waste” actually worked as an artificial selection force, it wasn’t “wasteful” at all
No. Humans give them feed (which humans can’t process well) and turn it into eggs, which are high in protein and other good stuff. Plus, they’re tasty. So, resources aren’t wasted.
Wild fowl don’t usually lay unfertilized eggs. Some species do occasionally. What you have in chickens is a species that is the result of 10,000 years of selected breeding to produce eggs more often. People kept the ones that produced more eggs, and ate the others. That strongly selected for hens that lay eggs more often. For millennia.
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