Animals Hatched From Eggs (1970)

[Music] eggs when I was a very little boy I used to go with my mother when she shopped for eggs and because I saw so many eggs I thought I knew a lot about them you couldn't tell me anything about eggs that I didn't already know for instance I knew that eggs were white or sometimes Brown and I knew that they were laid by chickens and I knew that there had to be a rooster a father chicken to fertilize the eggs if babies were going to grow inside and hatch from them that was how there got to be more chickens in the world that was what I knew about eggs and I thought it was all there was to know but then I met a boy who told me that chickens weren't just chickens they were Birds something like the birds that fly through the air and I thought that if chickens hatch from eggs then all the other kinds of birds must hatch from eggs too so I watched birds and I read books about birds and I learned a lot about them the same way that chickens hatch from big white or brown eggs robins hatch from little blue eggs Ducks hatch from lighter colored eggs and seagulls from green eggs with spots meow Larks hatch from whitish eggs with red spots and plovers from whitish eggs with gray spots sandpipers from Little eggs and ostriches from very big eggs and then one day I asked my mother if all birds lay eggs and she told me that only the motherb bird the female lays them before they're laid the father bird the male fertilizes them inside an egg a baby bird starts out as a very small thing that doesn't look like a bird at all the baby grows using the egg yolk as its food then in time it breaks out of its shell it lives and eats and in a while it becomes a grown-up adult bird that was what I learned about eggs and for a long time I thought it was all there was to know but then I met a girl who told me that Birds aren't the only animals that hatch from eggs she said that a lot of snakes and lizards and animals like that hatched from eggs too well I didn't know about that so I watched lizards and snakes and I read books about them and I learned a lot about them most snakes lay eggs eggs with shells something like birds eggs and baby snakes hatch from them lizards lay eggs too and so do turtles and they look like chicken's eggs except that the shells are much softer and of course baby turtles hatch from them anyway that was what I learned about eggs and for a long time I thought I was kind of an egg expert but then my teacher got some pets for our classroom frogs now I knew a mother frog wasn't a bird and I knew it wasn't a snake or that kind of animal so it couldn't lay eggs but it did it laid them underwater and the father frog stayed close by to fertilize the eggs well they were very little eggs all stuck together and they didn't have hard shells like the eggs I already knew about but they were eggs and the mother frog didn't sit on them or watch over them but after a long while they hatched well the babies didn't look like birds snakes or Lizards but they didn't look like frogs either and I learned that some animals that hatch from eggs look different from their mothers and fathers but they eat and grow and in a while they begin to look like their mothers and fathers and so I read books and I learned that's how it is with frogs and that's how it is with another kind of animal called salamanders when salamander eggs had hatch the babies look different from grown-up animals so then I thought I knew everything there was to know about eggs my head was full of things about eggs I thought I could tell people anything about eggs that was before I met our neighbor and he showed me his fish his fish had laid eggs they look something like frog eggs and our neighbor told me that nearly all fish come from eggs little fish and fish bowls and big fish that swim in lakes rivers and oceans well there sure were plenty of animals that hatched from eggs I thought there were fish there were snakes and animals like that frogs and animals like that and there were birds and I thought I knew about all of them but then I met a farmer who had bees and he told me that bees were insects and they kept their eggs and their beehives well I didn't know they hatched from eggs so I watched insects and I read books about insects and I learned a lot about them in every beehive only one female the queen bee lays eggs in the honeycomb well bees lay eggs in their hives and mosquitoes lay eggs on water grasshoppers lay eggs that are brown and many ants lay eggs that are white ants are like bees only the queen lays the eggs some moths lay their eggs on twigs and leaves and some flies lay theirs on garbage or decaying stuff bull weevils lay their eggs in little holes they make in cotton plants and walking sticks those little insects that look like sticks lay theirs on bushes or trees a walking stick lays tiny eggs about the size of a pin head and when one hatches a baby walking stick looks like grown-up walking stick but not all insects are like that a baby fly is a tiny wormlike animal that looks very different from a grown-up fly and baby mosquitoes swimming in the water don't look much like grown-up mosquitoes that can fly and who would imagine that an animal that looks like this when it is very young would grow gr to be a moth but I knew about them by then I knew a lot about animals that hatched from eggs and the kinds of eggs they hatch from and I still remember it now when I'm grown up but you know just yesterday I met a man who told me about another kind of animal that hatches from an egg a platypus it lives in Australia someday I'm going to watch a platypus I've already started to read books about it and I'll find out I'll find out everything there is to know about animals that hatch from eggs [Music]