Nature's Blueprint: Insights from an Egg

In the previous article, we explored the many wonders of an egg:

1. Its precise thickness, 2. The yolk as nourishment for the chick, 3. A built-in waste bag, and now let's move on to 4. The instinct to incubate.

All animals are born with inherent instincts in their brains, teaching them how to care for their offspring. These commands are encoded in their DNA, not just as a single code but as multiple codes for each animal.

For example, waterfowl like geese and ducks have an instinct to pluck their breast feathers, allowing their skin to warm the eggs. The body heat alone isn't always enough, which is why many birds have the instinct to turn the eggs twice a day, ensuring even warmth all around!

Birds build nests, crafting them over several days with twigs, in just the right size and shape—a process that demands numerous commands in their DNA.

Reptiles are equally fascinating. The Galapagos land iguana, for instance, undertakes a perilous kilometer-long journey to lay its eggs in the scorching volcanic ash that serves as an incubator. The iguana digs a nest tirelessly, laying around twenty eggs, and then guards them for several days from predators.

These instincts provide evidence of a Creator due to their precision and the undeniable fact that variances would lead to extinction.

The range of instinctual possibilities seems endless. A hen could just as easily ignore her egg, step on it, roll it into water, or peck and eat it. It requires a very specific set of codes to ensure the incubation process, with additional codes for the details of incubation and egg protection.

This indicates that from the very first creature, all necessary survival commands were set. There's no room for randomness—it's all or nothing. Without incubation from the start, chickens wouldn't exist today. Without nests, bird eggs would fall and break.

5. How does the chick receive warmth?

While the hen incubates the egg for warmth, did you know that the developing cell moves toward the heat? It's not by its own volition; there is an automatic mechanism within the egg to ensure this.

You've probably noticed a small white spot on the egg yolk; keen eyes might observe that during frying, the white spot floats upward on the yolk. This spot contains the cell. No matter how you turn the egg, the yolk inside will always rotate so that the cell faces upward, toward the hen's warmth.

This is a mechanical operation: the yolk hangs within the egg on two spiral protein cords. This allows the yolk to rotate but always remain centered. These spiral cords ensure that the developing cell faces upward, getting warmth from the brooding hen. The egg may turn in the nest, but the cell always receives the warmth it needs to develop. This mechanism is critical; without it, the cell wouldn't develop into a chick.

6. How does the chick hatch from the egg?

The moment of hatching arrives; a healthy chick tries to enter the world, but how? The Creator endowed it with a "can opener"—a small, special nail known as the egg tooth on its beak, which helps break the shell from inside! Later, this tooth blends into the beak's structure and disappears.

It's obvious that even in the first egg and chick, this nail had to exist, or the chick would die in the egg, and chickens would become extinct. Marine creatures have a chemical lab for this purpose; they use special substances to dissolve the shell and emerge.

These integral processes needed to exist from the very first egg; they couldn't appear in "stages." They point to a creation planned from the start, even demonstrating that the egg shows there's a Creator.

Scientists grapple with this question:

"Each mutation alone has no selective value. For example, the conquest of land by vertebrates began with reptiles evolving from primitive amphibians. But the transition to terrestrial life required radical changes in egg characteristics. Exposed to air, they had to develop a shell to prevent evaporation. They needed a yolk and albumen for food and fluid supply to the embryo, and an internal waste pocket for metabolic residue (marine creatures release waste directly into the water). They needed an embryonic horn to crack the shell (marine embryos secrete a chemical for this purpose).

Now, these changes, without coordination and simultaneous occurrence, would be useless. Moreover, each alone could be fatal to the embryo (like a hard shell without a horn to crack it). To be pre-coordinated implies attributing predefined goals to evolution, totally rejected by Darwinian evolution. On the other hand, assuming these mutations occurred simultaneously by chance is statistically improbable." (IBM Thoughts, 1981, "Sociobiology: Human Nature", page 31).

Complex mechanisms exist in various eggs, across thousands of species, each indicating design from the outset. Those who don't draw the obvious conclusion will have to believe the impossible. A wise friend of mine, R' Shimon Cohen, once said, 'If a non-believer understood what they must believe as a non-believer, they'd become a believer!'