(from 7 Species That Got Screwed By Mother Nature, #2)

Most baby birds hatch as scrawny, helpless little things that need tons of parental care. But why is that? There’s a significant evolutionary advantage to having your chicks born bigger and healthier. If you just lay a larger egg, your chick will have a higher chance of survival after hatching. Flawless logic, right? Evolution thought so, too, and decided to try it out on the flightless kiwi of New Zealand. Here’s how that experiment went:

This is too big.

The spotted kiwi grows to about 10 inches high and weighs in at just under 3 pounds, yet it manages to lay an egg 5 inches long. For comparison, that’s like a human being giving birth to a normal-sized second grader. A female kiwi can’t even eat for two or three days before laying the egg because there’s no space in her abdomen for her stomach. Not surprisingly, once the egg is laid, the mother wants little more to do with the rotten bastard and leaves the rest of the incubation up to the father. And if he complains for even one goddamn second, she’ll take a hammer to his skull, swear to Christ, she’ll do it — try her.

“An omelet sounds real damn good right now.”