what came first the chicken or the egg?

Answer 1

CHICKEN

Answer 2

In this case, the egg is not assumed to be a chicken egg. In effect this changes the question to: "Which came first, a chicken or any egg".

From a cellular biology point of view this question can be answered quite easily. The egg came first because any female sex cell is called an egg.

If the egg is defined structurally as the hard shelled thing, and the chicken a feather covered animal, the answer is still simple. Evolutionary scientists believe the first hard shell egg was the amniotic egg laid around 300 million years ago, and was laid by the animal who was the link between amphibians and reptiles. One of the first dinosaurs that we know had feathers was the Archaeopteryx, and came much later. Modern birds would not arise until 150 million years ago, descending from theropod dinosaurs.

In this case, the first chicken must have been the mutated offspring of a proto-chicken that laid the egg containing the first true chicken. In any case, this creature hatched from a recognizable egg. After all, the question is purposefully ambiguous -- it is not, "Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?"

The crux of the matter is how to biologically define 'a chicken'. What level of genetic similarity or structural similarity determine whether an organism is a chicken? One can only define what was the first chicken after the fact, thus any definition of the first chicken becomes arbitrary. The question 'which came first?' ignores the complicated reality of speciation.

According to the principles of speciation, neither the chicken nor the egg came first, because speciation does not occur in simple, obvious units. In fact, evolution is about a slow transition in an overall population. What qualifies as “chicken” (ignoring the many diverse modern types of chicken) involves a wide range of genetic traits (alleles) that are not encompassed in a single individual and continue to be modified from generation to generation.

The transition from non-chicken to chicken is a gray area in which several generations are involved, and therefore which includes many many chicken-and-egg events, with no one step representing the whole. Since the result of the process is an incomplete transition into various new characteristics rather than one single blueprint, a new species, "chicken", is only identified in hindsight when the species can be obviously identified as different from its ancestral stock.

Answer 3

Actually this has a real answer. According to the book "Random Kinds of Factness: 1001 (or so) Absolutely True Tidbits About (mostly) Everything" by Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo the egg came first.

According to their research chickens evolved from early Indochina birds called red jungle fowl. Mutations in the jungle fowls eggs produced things more like chickens...these bred with other bird causing more mutations producing todays chicken.

So the eggs have it!

Answer 4

THE EGG
heres why:
In nature, living things evolve through changes in their DNA. In an animal like a chicken, DNA from a male sperm cell and a female ovum meet and combine to form a zygote -- the first cell of a new baby chicken. This first cell divides innumerable times to form all of the cells of the complete animal. In any animal, every cell contains exactly the same DNA, and that DNA comes from the zygote.

Chickens evolved from non-chickens through small changes caused by the mixing of male and female DNA or by mutations to the DNA that produced the zygote. These changes and mutations only have an effect at the point where a new zygote is created. That is, two non-chickens mated and the DNA in their new zygote contained the mutation(s) that produced the first true chicken. That one zygote cell divided to produce the first true chicken.

Prior to that first true chicken zygote, there were only non-chickens. The zygote cell is the only place where DNA mutations could produce a new animal, and the zygote cell is housed in the chicken's egg. So, the egg must have come first.

Answer 5

This question appears regularly in the question file, so let's take a shot at it.

In nature, living things evolve through changes in their DNA. In an animal like a chicken, DNA from a male sperm cell and a female ovum meet and combine to form a zygote -- the first cell of a new baby chicken. This first cell divides innumerable times to form all of the cells of the complete animal. In any animal, every cell contains exactly the same DNA, and that DNA comes from the zygote.

Chickens evolved from non-chickens through small changes caused by the mixing of male and female DNA or by mutations to the DNA that produced the zygote. These changes and mutations only have an effect at the point where a new zygote is created. That is, two non-chickens mated and the DNA in their new zygote contained the mutation(s) that produced the first true chicken. That one zygote cell divided to produce the first true chicken.

Prior to that first true chicken zygote, there were only non-chickens. The zygote cell is the only place where DNA mutations could produce a new animal, and the zygote cell is housed in the chicken's egg. So, the egg must have come first.

Answer 6

So far, all the people that say chicken have no scientific support while the egg people do...i myself say the egg came first for almost all the reasons already said

Answer 7

ahhhh, here we go...
I can only go with both, because what would be there to hold the yoke and whites? The egg would be half formed, while the chicken would be half formed too, and then the egg would fully form over the chicken until birth, but then I guess that would mean the egg was first, huh?
sorry if this didn't help, just something to think about...

Answer 8

Egg,

Because this egg came from some type of bird after many evolutions became a chicken.
Then one day the chicken was born. Please dont forget the egg came first before this first chicken.

Answer 9

Egg

Answer 10

the egg that contained the chicken.

during evolution, a non-chicken layed an egg that happened to contain a strange mutation, maybe it was a chicken beak, this egg that was layed contained the very first chicken, so therefore the egg came first.

Answer 11

The EGG. The chicken's ancestor, pterodactyl (a bird-dino), kept evolving and evolving till the egg it laid at a point of time had evolved into a chicken's egg. The chicken hatched out..