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Cells are small? compared to what? An ostrich egg is a single cell
by socalgal2 4mo ago
Cells are small? compared to what? An ostrich egg is a single cell
- graypegg 4mo agoI don't know for sure here, but isn't the ostrich IN the egg a multicellular animal? I would assume the first point where the egg contains anything that will become the ostrich, mitosis is happening to make more ostrich cells. I'm assuming there's always cell walls and nucleuses every step of the way here, and the egg and ostrich are never just one big cell. I could be off base here though, I'm really channeling grade 9 bio class from decades ago!
- limbero 4mo agoYou're correct, but only for fertilized eggs. Unfertilized eggs are single cells.
- devilbunny 4mo agoSurrounded by a bunch of stuff that isn’t the ovum. “There is at most one cell in an unfertilized bird egg” is not the same as “an unfertilized bird egg is one cell and nothing more”.
- otherme123 4mo agoThe trick is that the egg is a ball with one small cell (the ovum) that happens to have also a huge reservoir of food for the future ostrich. There is a moment when there is only once cell in the egg, just after the fussion of the ovum and the sperm cell.
- knappa 4mo agoUnfertilized bird eggs are single cells, fertilized eggs should be multicellular by the time they are laid.
- jackmalpo 4mo agoskeletal muscle cells can be many cm in length
- otherme123 4mo agoA neuron can be more than 1 meter long in humans, more than 20 meter in a whale.
- bilsbie 4mo agoI never bought into the egg thing. There’s clearly a distinct cell in the center that’s going to divide and grow inside the egg. The egg itself isn’t undergoing mitosis.
- saulpw 4mo agoThe yolk is an energy/vitamin source, not a 'cell'. The division happens outside the yolk. From Wikipedia: > The yolk is not living cell material like protoplasm, but largely passive material
- al_borland 4mo agoI had to go look this up, as I had heard the egg thing my whole life and just accepted it. It turns out the oocyte is the single cell inside the egg, which for birds is significantly larger than a typical cell. So in that respect, the cell in a bird egg is very large. However, compared to the egg itself, it's tiny. The yolk and whites in the egg are all to provide nutrients as it grows, if fertilized.
- ErroneousBosh 4mo agoOne of the fascinating things about biology I think is this - that if the cells of your body were the size of an egg, they'd be way, way too big and you'd probably die.