When a chicken or any other bird lays an egg, the egg stays the same size (even though the bird inside is growing) until it’s ready to hatch. But a snake egg grows along with the developing unborn snake inside it.
The shell of a snake egg is not hard like a bird’s egg; it is soft and leathery, so it can grow and stretch as the snake grows inside it. Some eggs are one-third larger when they’re hatched than they were when they were laid!
The baby snake inside the egg develops a sharp tooth on its upper jaw. When the time comes for the egg to hatch, the baby snake uses this tooth to rip open the leathery shell. Then, it slithers out. Soon afterwards, the tooth drops off, never to grow back again.
If you dropped a snake egg, it wouldn’t break, it would probably bounce!
