What If Humans Laid Eggs Instead of Giving Birth?

Laying an egg sounds easier than giving birth. It would actually be a disaster. Here's why. what if humans laid eggs | why don't humans lay eggs | why mammals stopped laying eggs | platypus eggs | how the placenta evolved | animated what if Imagine the nurse walking in and handing your mum an egg instead of a baby. No pregnancy, no labour, just a shell and months of waiting. Most people think that would be the easy option. In this animated what if story, we find out why an egg would make having a baby harder, not easier. A mammal can lay eggs: the platypus does, and its babies hatch about two centimetres long. But a human egg would still have to come out the same way you did, and a shell can't squeeze like a newborn's skull. An egg is a lunchbox that packs all the food on day one, and a human baby needs far too much. Then someone has to keep the egg body-warm, day and night, the way an emperor penguin father balances his egg on his feet for about 65 days without eating. Then the real twist: your own DNA still carries broken egg yolk genes, and the placenta that fed you was built with help from a gene that came from an ancient virus. You were born, not hatched, partly because of an old infection. Would you rather lay an egg or give birth? Tell me in the comments. 0:00 The nurse and the egg 0:29 Wouldn't an egg be easier? 0:54 The mammal that lays eggs 1:33 Problem 1: getting out 2:04 The lunchbox problem 2:59 Problem 2: keeping it warm 3:32 Life in an egg-laying world 4:21 Hatch day 4:50 Problem 3: inside you 5:30 Egg, pouch, womb 6:24 The secret in your DNA 7:07 The rule 7:20 Born, not hatched