Tell me if you guys think the answer to this question makes sense...?

Question

Q. What came first: the chicken or the egg?
A. The egg...because dinosaurs were laying eggs way before chickens came about...
Do they mean "egg" in general? Or do they mean...did the chicken egg come before the chicken?

Quite a stumper, if you ask me.
Please give your opinion on this one.
Much Thanks

Answer 1

I don't believe the age old query of "which came first..." has any kind of twist, or hidden agenda, but it is still a good question. It's a specific question of the timing of origination of the chicken and chicken egg. Were humans "created" or did we "evolve" as a baby, or an adult full of knowledge?

Answer 2

The egg came before the chicken.

Whatever laid the egg was not a chicken, but the ancestor of a chicken, and the chicken mutated from the egg. Since some dinosaurs were ancestors of current birds, I guess that's the link whoever said that was trying to create.

The idea is that the egg came before the chicken because the chicken mutated through evolution into the creature it is today.

Answer 3

They mean chicken egg.

Lol man I don't think people understand what your question is or the question in general.

We all know eggs came before chickens they are referring to chicken eggs!


Chuck H <----- Yes that is true but we know chickens lay chicken eggs so how could a chicken lay a chicken egg before a chicken egg existed. Its a question that changed as you look at it but they have been second guessing this for a hundred years. We aren't going to come to any conclusions and this question runs deeper as you first think. Give it some real though after you know about evolution and what the real question is then you will give up like I have. From what I know and have brain stormed about I believe it was the egg. But I know it could also be the chicken. So I give up.

Answer 4

We already went through this. You're right and you're wrong. Dinosaurs had eggs before chickens came along. But once an animal is born it can't evolve any further. So any mutant change has to come in the egg when it is being formed and any change will be very slight. However, over a period of thousands of years these slight changes add up to a different creature. Give the changes a million years and you can see what happens.

Answer 5

You are exactly right. That was one of the questions on my Comparative Vertebrate Anatome final. Reptiles laid eggs millions of years before any bird was around or at least until reptiles eventually evolved into birds over a period of millions if not hundreds of million years. The question you ask never specifies whether or not they are talking about an egg in general or the chicken egg specifically. They have recently found fossil remains of a reptile that had scales and also, some feathers and they think this is sort of like the bridge between the two.

Answer 6

it just goes back to whenever we started calling them chickens. The animals that first laid an egg that hatched into a "chicken" evolved from something that wasnt surviving well in it's habbitat, "battle of the fittest" so over time the animal chaged into something that could survive. so whatever the animal before we started calling it a chicken was isnt around because it evolved into a chicken. So if were going by what we call a chicken then yes the egg came before the chicken, but whatever laid that egg we dont have a name for because it doesnt exist anymore. So whatever u want to call that animal that laid the egg, came before the chicken or the egg.(wasnt just one animal, evolution happens over many animals at once, if it happened one animal at a time we wouldnt even be here yet)

Answer 7

It actually does have a hidden agenda, because the debate stems from whether or not one believes God created chickens in the "six days," which then laid eggs and made more chickens, or whether chickens evolved from other organisms. Your answer is how I usually answer that question. Either way the egg would come first, because if the chicken evolved from an ancestor of sorts, say a proto-chicken, it would lay an egg which contained a mutation of itself, which hatched and grew into the chicken we have today.

Answer 8

Can a non/proto chicken lay a chicken egg, and can a chiken hatch from a non/proto chicken egg? What defines a chicken as a chiken, even today the genitic material of all animals is constantly changing, are some chickens more chicken then orthers? For a real hard question think of this in terms of humans, my gentic material will be diffrent from yours, and both of our gentic material differs from the ancestors of our past. Where will our decendants stop being human and start being something else, and when did the chicken stop being whatever it was and become a chicken. I think this question has probably been over complicated, and orginaly meant something more simple.

Answer 9

I think The chicken probably came first because 1. The chicken had to sit on the egg to incubate it to make it hatch. 2. Because it was created.

Answer 10

The question itself is like the question, Have you stopped beating your wife? because if you say no, they ask you why not, and if you say yes, they ask you why you beat her in the first place...

So the chicken or the egg question is similar as it does not ask a valid question: if you say the egg, then what laid it, and if you say the chicken, then what egg did the chicken hatch out of...

The answer you mention recognizes that the question is invalid and silly, so gives a "clever" answer.