# What if people laid eggs?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [March 3, 2009, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162 "2009-03-03T17:11:21Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/41 "2009-03-04T00:49:29Z")
> [@gotpasswords](#):
>
> Instead of cribs, parents would go shopping at Ikea to pick up a NÅEST for the wee ones, and when they get a bit older, back to the store for a KØØPP.
Wins.
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### Author:  [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/42 "2009-03-04T01:53:07Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#):
>
> Except the boobs are just refined plumbing. I don’t see any reason boobs wouldn’t have evolved.
Or we’d have evolved to find some other part sexually attractive, and that body part would have become more prominent.
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### Author:  [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/43 "2009-03-04T02:54:40Z")
> [@Smeghead](#):
>
> True. However, allow me to point out that echinoderms have NO BOOBS!! Thus supporting my previous point.
Where the hell did I get echinoderms?? I meant monotremes. Oh, well. Echinoderms don’t have BOOBS either, but that’s a much less compelling argument.
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### Author:  [@AllWalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AllWalker)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/44 "2009-03-04T03:04:43Z")
[Maiesiophilia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_fetish) wouldn’t exist. Or it would, but be a whole lot weirder.
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### Author:  [@horsetech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/horsetech)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/45 "2009-03-04T03:53:58Z")
It would put a new twist on the phrase “getting laid”.
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### Author:  [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/46 "2009-03-04T06:46:53Z")
I’m already having too much trouble dealing with humans being monotremes instead of primates. Or primates being monotremes.
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### Author:  [@Chez\_Guevara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chez_Guevara)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/47 "2009-03-04T07:47:01Z")
Lazy women who can’t be bothered to bring up their own kids will break into your house when you are out shopping and lay their egg next to yours.
When the intruder hatches, it will throw your own egg out of the house.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/48 "2009-03-04T10:24:30Z")
> [@Chez\_Guevara](#):
>
> Lazy women who can’t be bothered to bring up their own kids will break into your house when you are out shopping and lay their egg next to yours.
>
> When the intruder hatches, it will throw your own egg out of the house.
Now that’s just a cuckoo idea.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/49 "2009-03-04T10:31:54Z")
> [@Gus\_Gusterson](#):
>
> You know that the chicken eggs we eat are unfertilized eggs, right? You’re not going to make a very good omelet with a fertilized egg.
Yes you will, so long as the egg is fresh enough. Maybe it’s different in foreign places, but where I come from, people who keep hens and a roost don’t castrate the roost 😛 (they may need to give him a separate pen to keep the hens from pecking him to death, though).
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### Author:  [@AllWalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AllWalker)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/50 "2009-03-04T11:16:29Z")
Egging someone’s house would be a widespread fertility ritual.
And TPing the house would show your respect, or something.
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### Author:  [@Mudshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mudshark)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/51 "2009-03-04T12:20:15Z")
I think we would probably crush the eggs when we sat on them to keep them warm.
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### Author:  [@Turek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turek)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/52 "2009-03-04T14:06:02Z")
> [@Mudshark](#):
>
> I think we would probably crush the eggs when we sat on them to keep them warm.
Which obviously didn’t/wouldn’t happen, or the race wouldn’t have reached the point where it could post on a message board.
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### Author:  [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/53 "2009-03-04T14:26:27Z")
I like the idea of this. Just imagine how much easier our lives would be if, as soon as our children were born, we put them in to an artificial egg and left them there until they became adults. No teenage angst, no potty training, no tantrums…just a bit of egg sitting. Bliss.
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### Author:  [@palindromemordnilap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/palindromemordnilap)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/54 "2009-03-04T15:49:17Z")
> [@Nava](#):
>
> Yes you will, so long as the egg is fresh enough. Maybe it’s different in foreign places, but where I come from, people who keep hens and a roost don’t castrate the roost 😛 (they may need to give him a separate pen to keep the hens from pecking him to death, though).
Correct. A fertilized egg has the same appearance and nutritional value as an unfertilized egg, assuming it is refrigerated so as to prevent cell growth.
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### Author:  [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/55 "2009-03-04T18:42:13Z")
Would we still eat the eggs of other animals? Might we find it abhorrent? After all, we don’t eat the fetuses of anything now.
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### Author:  [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/56 "2009-03-04T18:49:10Z")
But eating the fetuses of other animals would be messy and difficult. I figured the reason we ate bird eggs was because they were there.
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### Author:  [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/57 "2009-03-04T20:17:28Z")
You’d find the bargaining power between the sexes would become much more equal. As it stands now, due to evolutionary forces women tend to have the upper hand. Attractive women can simply sit back and wait for men to proposition them. Men have to be more active when it comes to finding mates. Men compete; women choose. You’d see more women propositioning men if we procreated by incubating eggs.
Assuming that we allow for “abortion” (simply choosing not to incubate the eggs), unwanted children would be a thing of the past.
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### Author:  [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2009, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/58 "2009-03-04T20:27:33Z")
> [@Blalron](#):
>
> Assuming that we allow for “abortion” (simply choosing not to incubate the eggs), unwanted children would be a thing of the past.
Would we attach morality to egg dumping, though? “OH NO, think of the eggs!!!” I don’t think we should, but people might.
Would we need birth control?
If a man didn’t want to incubate the egg, could he just opt out and give the woman the option of not incubating them as well, or is child support still an issue?
And what if no one wants to incubate the egg, so the man and woman just throw it out and someone goes through the garbage and takes it…is that illegal?
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### Author:  [@Incubus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Incubus)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2009, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/59 "2009-03-05T03:20:11Z")
Lifetime channel would have movies like “Prom nite dumpster egg”.
Sensationalist news networks would have articles like “Natalie Suleman laid a clutch of 14 eggs, but who is sitting on them? TAXPAYERS!” 😛
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### Author:  [@schnuckiputzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/schnuckiputzi)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2009, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-people-laid-eggs/488162/60 "2009-03-05T19:51:10Z")
> [@Nava](#):
>
> Yes you will, so long as the egg is fresh enough. Maybe it’s different in foreign places, but where I come from, people who keep hens and a roost don’t castrate the roost 😛 (they may need to give him a separate pen to keep the hens from pecking him to death, though).
Farmer checking in here. All the eggs we gathered were most probably fertilized – the banty rooster nearly wore himself out most days – but at only a few hours old, you can’t tell the difference. Never had a problem with the rooster being henpecked, most of the time the trouble was him pulling the back feathers off the hens in an effort to …hang on, I suppose.
As far as the OP goes, I would suppose unwanted pregnancy would be a lot easier to avoid – don’t incubate.
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