2 replies to this topic

[Notch]

Ok, so.. For a long time, I’ve claimed that obviously the egg came before the chicken, as the first chicken had to be hatched from something.

We had a discussion about it today at work, and Jens contested that claim. So now I’ve revised my position.

Chicken can lay eggs without them being fertilized. This means the eggs are made up of non-genetically-mixed material, and that the fertilization alters the contents of the eggs (the thing that gets hatched).

This means that some kind of proto-chicken got fertilized, laid a proto-chicken egg that contained a mutated offspring that we would today call a chicken.

So obviously, the chicken came first. QEFD.

[Source]

[John]

No the egg came first -- you just said so yourself -- the egg containing the mutated genes from the proto-chicken hatched into a chicken and therefore the EGG came first not the chicken.

-John

P.S. they never specified what kind of egg -- dinosaurs have been around a LOT longer than chickens and therefore the egg came WAY before the chicken.

[IshukRahl]

I do believe the egg came first. I imagine it is usually the offspring that tend to be the ones that mutate or evolve while in the stage of developing, therefore it is more likely that the egg came first as it would have mutated from one thing into another while in the egg.

Now we just need that time machine to go back and find the first chicken to see how he came to be!