THE MOST PERFECT THING, how life begins in fragile containers

THE MOST PERFECT THING
TIM BIRKHEAD
Bloomsbury USA (non-affiliate Amazon link
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Renowned ornithologist Tim Birkhead opens this gripping story as a female guillemot chick hatches, already carrying her full quota of tiny eggs within her undeveloped ovary. As she grows into adulthood, only a few of her eggs mature, are released into the oviduct, and are fertilized by sperm stored from copulation that took place days or weeks earlier. Within a matter of hours, the fragile yolk is surrounded by albumen and the whole is gradually encased within a turquoise jewel of a shell. Soon afterward the fully formed egg is expelled onto a bare rocky ledge, where it will be incubated for four weeks before another chick emerges and the life cycle begins again.

The Most Perfect Thing is about how eggs in general are made, fertilized, developed, and hatched. The eggs of most birds spend just 24 hours in the oviduct; however, that journey takes 48 hours in cuckoos, which surreptitiously lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. From the earliest times, the study of birds' ovaries and ova (eggs) played a vital role in the quest to unravel the mysteries of fertilization and embryo development in humans. Birkhead uses birds' eggs as wondrous portals into natural history, enlivened by the stories of naturalists and scientists, including Birkhead and his students, whose discoveries have advanced current scientific knowledge of reproduction.

My Review: I thought "guillemot" was a Dr. Seuss name before I read this book. Author Birkhead disabused me of this with his praises sung for the aesthetics of their shells:
I mean pretty enough, but this guy's obsessed....

And eggs are perfect in so many different ways. They have to be, for birds lay and incubate in such incredible diversity of habitats and situations, from the poles to the tropics; in wet, dry, clean and microbe-infested conditions; in nests and without nests; warmed by body heat and without body heat. The shape, colour and size of eggs as well as the composition of their yolk and albumen all constitute the most extraordinary set of adaptations. The fact that birds' eggs also provided biologists with their first insights into human reproduction makes their story even more momentous.

He is not overselling the burden of his refrain. This is a fascinating look at what these dinosaur revenants do in the reproductive world (I got a new insult out of the read: I told one person I detest that she was an altricial birth to a precocial species) and what that has revealed to scientists in applicability to all others.

People's love of the beauty of eggs has led to some dark consequences. Egg collectors hunted their favorites to actual or functional extinction, inspiring the UK to pass pretty draconian laws against private ownership of the things...in 1954! Even *I* wasn't born then, and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was still a love-offering in progress!

What you need to know most is: was it fun to read? I'll say yes, because I really like science and am not afraid of the dictionary. If you're not a science nut, maybe it won't delight you; maybe you'll have to look stuff up; and maybe that won't agree with you.

It agreed with me.