A Great Elephant Bird (Aepyornis maximus) egg

Weighing in at a whopping 1,200 pounds (544 kg), Aepyornis is amongst the largest birds of all time. Commonly known as “elephant birds”, these ratites—the class of long-legged, flightless birds that include emus, ostriches, and cassowaries—were endemic to Madagascar until their extinction approximately 1,000 years ago.

At 150 times the size of a chicken’s, Aepyornis boasts the largest eggs of any animal ever. Used by generations of Malgasies as both a food source and as a means to transport water, precious few of these eggs remain in existence. Only a tiny fraction of those left are wholly intact, with the overwhelming majority being restored from pieced together fragments. Most of these also display a pip, a hole made either organically by a chick attempting to exit the egg, or by a person in an attempt to delicately empty the egg's contents.