Incubation of penguin eggs

Abstract

The preservation of rare and endangered species of birds requires finding efficient, and above all successful, methods of breeding them in captivity. One strategy adopted is to remove eggs from the mother, making her lay more eggs, and then incubating the removed eggs artificially. Artificial incubation machines must attempt to replicate the conditions of natural incubation as closely as possible. Aside from careful control of temperature and humidity within the artificial incubator, an important factor to reproduce is that eggs must be turned about their long axis from time to time. Hatching will not occur in an egg that is not subjected to some form of occasional rotation. The reason why eggs are turned and the way in which they should be turned are still not well understood. The Study Group attempted to gain some insight into why eggs have to be turned from a fluid dynamic perspective. A simple egg-turning model for an egg at the first stages of incubation was constructed, based on lubrication theory.