I have a question now about the discarded last egg. Do we know how the parent falcons know or decide that an egg is no longer viable?
Have you ever spun a hard-boiled egg and a raw egg? If you have, in a simplified form, it's like that
As the chicks develop, they go from raw eggs to "hard-boiled". At hatching stage, it may be that if the chick dies in the egg, the adults can't "hear" it anymore. To provide a possible human equivalent (reverse anthropomorphism
) if a close companion, spouse, child, pet, is quieter than usual, isn't our impulse to think that something is "wrong"? If the response (excluding the pets of course) is "nothing" do we necessarily believe it? Or do we wait and watch until we are sure it is "nothing" or that it is "something"? Simplified answer but hopefully it gives you the sense of how it works.
