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A chicken laid a huge egg with another egg already inside it

EGGCEPTION.

Isobel Hamilton

on March 6, 2018

A chicken laid a huge egg with another egg already inside it

Eggs inside eggs inside eggs... Credit: Getty Images/RooM RF

An egg inside an egg sounds like some weird metaphor for something, but no. It appears to be a literal thing.

Stockman's Eggs in Queensland, Australia, posted an image of an absolutely enormous chicken's egg on Sunday.

That poor, poor chicken.

Soon Australian outlets started running the story that inside the mega-egg another, smaller egg had been discovered.

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Scott Stockman of Stockman's eggs told ABC news that the egg weighed 176g.

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ABC also consulted associate Professor Raf Freire from Charles Sturt University's veterinary sciences school, who said he wasn't sure how the double-egg had come to pass.

He did however posit that it's not unusual for hens to retain eggs (especially when "very stressed") although these eggs usually drop out the next day. From this he supposed a second ovum had been released and then formed around the first one.

"Biologically I'm struggling to understand why that smaller egg never dropped out, it's very odd," he told ABC.

Regardless of biological explanation, people on Twitter had plenty to say.