Technology & Science
Colossal Hatches 26 Chicks in 3-D Printed “Shells,” Pushing Moa De-Extinction Bid Forward
On 19 May 2026, Colossal Biosciences announced it successfully raised 26 healthy chickens inside open-top, silicone-membrane eggs—its first proof that a fully synthetic, size-scalable incubation vessel can replace a natural shell.
Focusing Facts
- Each prototype “egg” used a titanium hex-grid cup plus a 20-micron silicone membrane; the embryos were transferred at day-3 and completed the remaining 18-day chicken gestation under standard-atmosphere conditions.
- Colossal says the design will be enlarged roughly 80-fold to match the 24 cm × 18 cm eggs of the South Island Giant Moa, an extinct bird last seen ~1400 CE and impossible to surrogate in any living species.
- This is the company’s 8th declared milestone since its 2025 gene-edited “dire wolf,” and comes before any peer-reviewed data have been released on the egg system’s hatch-rate or oxygen-exchange metrics.
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