Oviparous Animals: List of Popular Animals that Lay Eggs

You might not be familiar with the term “oviparous animals,” but today, we’ll guide you through understanding them. Once you grasp the concept, it’s relatively straightforward. Identifying which animal types are oviparous is also simple, making it easier for you to explain this concept.

Oviparous Animals: An Overview

Oviparous animals refer to creatures that lay eggs with minimal embryonic development occurring within the mother’s body. This crucial distinction sets them apart from humans and other mammals. While humans do possess eggs at the onset of their reproductive process, extensive embryonic development transpires within the mother before the birth of the offspring.

Oviparous animals lay eggs and await the hatching process, contrasting with the conventional birthing cycle observed in other animal species.

Distinguishing Oviparous from Viviparous Animals

Conversely, viviparous animals, particularly mammals, nurture an embryo within the mother’s body, culminating in live birth. In the case of oviparous animals, offspring are not directly born from the mother; rather, the eggs are incubated until they hatch, with parental animals often tending to them until birth occurs.

List of Oviparous Animals

Names of Oviparous Animals

• Salmon
• Ostrich
• Crocodiles
• Chicken
• Raven
• Flamingo
• Echidna
• Platypus
• Duck
• Parrot
• Turtle
• Snake
• Frog
• Peacock
• Salamander

Familiar Oviparous Animals: Facts

Common examples of oviparous animals include most fish, amphibians, the majority of reptiles, all birds, and monotremes. While we could delve into the specifics, it’s more straightforward to discuss some of the more well-known types of oviparous creatures to help illustrate the concept.

Salmon

Salmon serves as a quintessential example of an oviparous fish. Females first deposit their eggs, followed by the male fertilizing them with his sperm. A single salmon nest can house anywhere between 500 to 1200 eggs, although only a small fraction successfully advance to the second stage of birth, and even fewer manage to hatch.

Ostrich

Recognizable for their distinctive egg shape, ostriches represent a prominent oviparous bird species. Their eggs claim the title of the largest among all bird eggs and are renowned for their sturdy build. Typically weighing around 5 pounds, these robust eggs are designed to endure the weight of the parent bird during the nesting process. Some larger bird eggs can withstand over 40 pounds of pressure before cracking.

Crocodile

Among the prevalent oviparous reptiles, crocodiles are known to safeguard their eggs along the river banks they inhabit. Some species of crocodiles even use their teeth to gently spin the eggs in their mouths, aiding in the hatching process by cracking the shell.

Chicken

It would be remiss not to mention the most common oviparous animal of all: the chicken. Interestingly, a female chicken possesses a finite number of eggs that can be laid during its lifetime. Unlike some other animals, they do not continue laying eggs until their demise but rather only produce eggs until their supply is exhausted.