Evolution
The Incubator Bird
The three to four pound Megapode or "incubator bird" (brush turkey) of Australia is unique among birds. All birds use body heat to incubate their eggs except the incubator bird.3
Instead, they pile up great heaps of debris which serve as incubators; the warmth of the fermenting compost provides the heat. Some incubator birds use the heat produced by volcanic action.3
After testing the nest to be sure it is adequate for incubating her eggs, the female lays 20 to 35 eggs at the rate of one egg every three days for up to seven months. As many as 16 eggs can exist in a normal mound at any one time. Each egg weighs about a half a pound and is as large as an ostrich egg - a tremendous amount of work for a three to four pound hen. Upon completion of her laying task, she leaves the nest, never to return and takes no part in the incubation and raising of her chicks.3
At this point the male begins to perform his job of managing the incubation of the deeply buried eggs. For incubator bird chicks to survive they require a precise temperature of exactly 91°F. It is the male's responsibility to ensure that the temperature of the mound will not vary more then one degree on either side of 91°F!3
Some scientists think the bird's thermometer is in its beak. Others believe its tongue can distinguish 91°F and a few tenths of a percent above and below 91°F.3
To maintain the temperature, the male digs down into the nest and checks the temperature. On hot days, he may pile extra sand on top of the nest to shield it from the sun. He may even rearrange the entire pile of rotting leaves and grasses several times a day.3
On cooler days, the male megapodes will push material off the top of the nest to permit more sunlight to penetrate the decaying organic material. Or, to keep the humidity at 99.5% around the eggs, he may dig conical holes toward the eggs to get more moisture deeper into the nest. Keeping Seymour writes: "This process is very precise: one centimeter of fresh material added to the mound can increase core temperature about 1½°C."3
The father provides fresh air for the chicks as he daily digs down to the eggs. To allow the chick to get air inside the shell, its egg has thousands of tiny holes (called pores) in its thick shell. These are shaped like conical ice cream cones with the narrowest part of the cone toward the chick. As the chick grows it cannot get enough air through the bottom of the cone so it begins to remove the inside layer of the shell. As it thins out the shell the holes get bigger (moving up the cone) and the chick can get more air.3
Unlike other birds, the chicks are ready to fly with full feathers as soon as they break out of the egg. When they hatch, they lie on their backs and dig up until they break out of the mound, a task that takes up to three days.3
Once the chicks dig out of the nest, they are on their own. They are not fed or cared for by either parent. When they are mature, the male will build a huge nest as an incubator for his mate's eggs. He will build this huge, precise mound without any instruction from his parents. This is not learned behavior.! How does the brush turkey know the importance of 91°F?3
How could the incubator bird even exist? How could a bird evolve the ability to precisely measure temperatures with its beak or tongue? Evolution says nothing is evolved until it is needed. How would the incubator bird know it needed the ability to keep its eggs at 91°F? The chicks would get too hot or too cold and die before he figured it out. And dead creatures do not evolve into higher forms.3