Peer J has published a paper detailing results of a grand 3D printed egg experiment. It seems that some birds (brood parasites), like the cowbird, sneak egg into other bird's nests (like robins) because they don't want to build their own nests. Well, researchers have been using wood or plaster eggs to understand how birds detect and reject foreign eggs in their nests. But these eggs were difficult to use because they couldn't provide uniformity-- important to scientific research. 3D printed eggs allow for uniformity among artificial eggs across experiments and an additional perk is that the digital models are easy to share too. Additional details on this story can be found here: http://3dprint.com/68409/3d-printed-bird-eggs/