Shining light at unhatched eggs could help with vital ‘gender reveals’
Scientists have discovered how light can help ‘gender reveal’ unhatched chicken eggs.
The new study found that light entering an intact bird egg shell can help assess the quality of the interior, determine the sex of the embryo developing inside the shell, and tell whether it has been fertilized.
In the study published in Newton, researcher Lennard van den Tweel from HatchTech BV said: “This previously unobserved phenomenon could help non-invasive investigation of egg contents even during embryo development in fertilized and incubated eggs and address the ethical dilemma of culling male chicks.”
More than 300 million chicks are slaughtered shortly after birth in Europe alone because male chicks cannot lay eggs and grow more slowly, reducing profitability.
Optical spectroscopy techniques, also seen in medicine, could be an ideal, non-invasive way to reveal the sex of an unhatched egg, scientists have suggested.
The “complex and unusual” optical properties of chicken eggs require further investigation and make the technique more sensitive, Van den Tweel said.
Vamshi Damagatla, author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at Politecnico di Milano, added: “The highly scattering nature of the bird eggshell may have evolved to protect the embryo from ultraviolet light or to reduce heat dissipation when the parents go out foraging.”
