If you teach statistics or quality statistics, you’re probably already familiar with the cuckoo egg data set.

The common cuckoo has decided that raising baby chicks is a stressful, thankless job. It has better things to do than fill the screeching, gaping maws of cuckoo chicks, day in and day out.

So the mother cuckoo lays her eggs in the nests of other bird species. If the cuckoo egg is similar enough to the eggs of the host bird, in size and color pattern, the host bird may be tricked into incubating the egg and raising the hatchling. (The cuckoo can then fly off to the French Riviera, or punch in to work at a nearby cuckoo clock, or do whatever it is that cuckoos with excess free time do.)

The cuckoo egg data set contains measurements of the lengths of cuckoo eggs that were collected from the nests of 5 different bird species. Using analysis of variance (ANOVA), students look for statistical evidence that the mean length of the cuckoo eggs differs depending on the host species. Presumably, that supports the idea that the cuckoo may adapt the length of its eggs to better match those of the host.

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