Are people really this ignorant about chicken biology?

[LizzyJo]

YMMV? Sorry, I'm ignorant about what that means.

 

[Rillion]

Quote:
Ha! Sorry, it means "your mileage may vary."

 

[A2SciTeach]

As my ID indicates, I am a science teacher, and a biologist. This post is interesting to me because I teach 7th grade LIFE science. I cover classification of organisms through systems and characteristics. For the animal kingdom, I start with the basic animal life forms from sponges and move up the chain to mammals. Chickens, as part of the bird class (Aves) would come after reptiles. Since fish and amphibians reproduce as described on this thread earlier, it's a pretty big deal when we see that reptiles have internal fertilization through the cloaca and eggs no longer need to be laid in very wet places or in water. These are leathery eggs, different than the eggs birds lay - the more familiar hard-shelled egg. The OP was shocked that nurses would not know about chickens - I'm not surprised. We remember what is important or pertinent to our lives.

Think about how much math people forget .Unless you use it you lose it. How many people on this forum know the standard form of a line or can remember how to integrate through substitution, or can remember how to construct a perpendicular bisector of a line using a compass and straight edge?

Let's lighten up here, folks, and use the questions we are asked about poultry to encourage people to learn about where their food comes from. Agriculture is not a branch of biology - please don't assume that people were not taught biology because they didn't connect what they learned in biology class to their breakfast food.

 

[LizzyJo]

I think that the idea was not that people were not TAUGHT biology. It was that people didn't LEARN biology.

 

[Rillion]

Quote:
True, though chickens are birds just like any other bird you learn about in biology.

But I agree with the spirit of your post-- I was guilty of the "Don't you have to have roosters to get eggs?" thing when I first started considering getting chickens. I was also guilty of the "If we evolved from apes, why are there still apes?" thing, once upon a time. I think people have intuitions about how nature works that just come automatically-- being intuitions-- and they don't stop to think about how much sense they make until somebody looks at them funny and says "Seriously?" So yes...it is an opportunity for education! Let's use it.

 

[A2SciTeach]

Yes, that was my point boiled down - that people who are asking a question are entitled to answers regardless of why they don't know the information and should be given the information without others criticizing or judging.

We all have tons of things we need to learn, or this forum wouldn't exist.

 

[SunAngel]

I'm all for helping people learn and learning things myself. Not everyone has knowledge of everything. But I don't go around trying to teach people Algebra when I suck at it and then get mad or argue when someone corrects me.

My problem comes in when you have people that form an idea or opinion about something, like not eating fresh eggs because they are dirty, and then passing that opinion on to their children and others. Those people aren't asking questions and trying to learn. They have formed their idea, gotten from who knows where and don't bother to find out if it is the truth. To me, that is where the stupidity comes in.

 

[Rillion]

Hehe...

I just got back from visiting my brother and sister-in-law. I don't have any chickens yet, but am planning to get some soon. As I was telling them about it, they had the following questions:

Brother (law degree, teaches middle school geography): "Can they still lay eggs without a rooster?"

SIL (PhD, psychology): "How do they fertilize the eggs?"

I had to smile, thinking of this thread. Then I explained it to them.

Edited to add: Oh, also.....my brother also said "So human women, of course, have all of their eggs inside them from the start. Do chickens have that too?" I assumed so, but I don't actually know. I mean, of course they don't have full formed eggs inside them to begin with, but do they have egg cells in their ovaries? Or is it like sperm, which are created on an as-you-go basis?

 

[speckledhen]

Yes, the potential eggs are inside the ovaries from the start. And the sex is already determined before fertilization.

 

[LizzyJo]

And the sex is already determined before fertilization.

Are you sure? Females should only have XX chromosomes. The male XY determines the sex the fertilized egg will turn out to be, or so I thought.​