Penguin Eggs Turn Transparent When Boiled? What Science Says

New Delhi:

One can think of cracking open a boiled egg, but there are no whites in it – on the contrary, it is completely transparent. This is exactly the claim of a viral Reddit post which disputes that the result of boiling a penguin egg is this. The visuals that were posted on the platform have caused a stir among users, some of which are intrigued while others are not so much.

What Happens When You Boil A Penguin Egg?

Not like a white chicken’s egg, which turns solid when it is boiled, a penguin egg, is only sightly different, it remains translusent. Meanwhile, in the IFL Science report, the albumen (egg white) of a penguin egg coagulates without turning clear.

Instead, it looks like jelly and is transparent, so you can see the yolk through it. The researchers mentioned that this is due to a different composition of glycoproteins in the penguin’s eggs as compared to human eggs. The ovalbumin content of chicken eggs is high, while penguin eggs have around 25 per cent penalbumin, which allows them to survive in the Antarctic cold weather.

Can You Eat Penguin Eggs?

Penguin eggs have always been human food. Mr. Robert Headland, the senior associate at Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, shared with IFL Science that the original Antarctic researchers made a living by consuming penguin meat and eggs. Gentoo penguins are the most prodigious egg-layers in the entire breeding season, making them the most commonly eaten ones.

Penguin hunting and egg collecting have been banned in almost all areas, apart from licensed areas such as the Falkland Islands. Mistah said that boiled penguin eggs have a fishy taste to them due to the bird’s krill-based diet. Some of the initial travelers thought that the flavor was not satisfying without vinegar. On the Falkland Islands, one community has been known to produce pavlova using penguin eggs.