How can you model the shape of birds' eggs?

My house has a front porch with three pillars, and the inside-facing part of each pillar, at the top,
is a popular spot for birds to build nests; so far we've been host to doves, sparrows and finches.
However, a strong gust of wind in the right direction often demolishes the nests, sadly. But the
parent birds are learning: they have decided that the hanging flower baskets are more desirable
locations from which to raise a family, and, at the same time, frustrate the local cat population.
Great care has to be taken when getting the "host" basket down to water the flowers: several eggs
can usually be found in the nest. It's just a question of location, location, location...

I was interested to learn that the geometric properties of birds' eggs are sometimes useful for
computations of shell permeability and incubation times, and even the design of egg trays for
hens' eggs. It should not be surprising therefore that there are mathematical models of the shape
of birds' eggs, and the relationship between their surface area and volume. For any closed
surface, there is a relationship between its area A and volume V of the following form:

A = kV 2/3 ,

k being a dimensionless constant depending on the shape of the closed surface. This is obvious
from dimensional considerations; both sides must have dimensions of (length)², since volume V
and surface area A scale respectively as the cube and the square of a linear dimension. It is easy
to see that for a cube, k = 6. This is related to a very useful quantity called the sphericity index,
because it is a measure of how close to spherical is a particular three-dimensional shape; see
question 63 for further details. In questions 64--67 we shall examine mathematical models
dominated by, respectively, trigonometric, algebraic, calculus and geometric concepts; who
knew that there are so many ways to look at an egg?

So what is the sphericity index?

A useful measure of volume relative to surface area is called the sphericity index. Since
volume V and surface area A scale respectively as the cube and the square of a linear dimension,
it is evident that a suitable dimensionless measure of the volume-to-surface area ratio for an
object should involve some power of the ratio The sphericity index is one such measure,
2/3 −1
V A .
being defined as

4.836V 2/3
χ= .
A
Hmm. What's with the ‘4.836’? After all, it's hardly a household number. This arises by requiring
that the sphericity index for a sphere is unity, so if we temporarily replace the above number by
α, it follows that for a sphere of radius R

2/3
4  4 
α  π R3   π
αV2/3
=   =α
3 3 
χ =1= ,
A 4π R2 4π

from which we obtain Because a sphere has the largest volume to

α = ( 4π ) × 32/3 ≈ 4.836.
1/3

surface area for any closed surface it follows that for other shapes, 0 <χ < 1. Let's consider some
examples: for a cube it is readily shown that χ ≈ 0.806; for two `kissing' spheres (i.e. in tangential
contact) χ = ≈ 0.794. I like the sphericity index because it is always of order one; there is
2−1/3
another quantity that is sometimes used in biological contexts, called the flatness index γ, where

A3
γ= ∝ χ −3 ,
V2

and it is generally for that reason larger than χ, being approximately 113 for a sphere and 216 for
a cube. The observant reader will have noticed immediately for all these examples that (i) the
radius of the sphere of side length of the cube has not been specified; and (ii) it is not necessary
to do so, because all the dimensional quantities cancel out (by design).