which came first the chicken ... or the egg!?

Question

do you know?!?

Answer 1

Which came first - the chicken or the egg? "The chicken" came first - in the sentence of the question. If the question is phrased differently, the answer is different.
Reframing the question

It could be said that the question simply requires one to know the context. Most people thinking of the question automatically think of the timeline and it is in this manner that both the previous evolutionary theory and religious teachings contexts arise. Other potential contexts are:

* Having looked through a dictionary from front to back, which came first? - the chicken or the egg?
* When you walked through the supermarket, which came first? - the chicken or the egg?
* When reading the menu, which came first? - the chicken or the egg?

Answer 2

It's a question that has baffled scientists, academics and pub bores through the ages: What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg.

Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal's life.

Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg.

Professor John Brookfield, a specialist in evolutionary genetics at the University of Nottingham, told the UK Press Association the pecking order was clear.

The living organism inside the eggshell would have had the same DNA as the chicken it would develop into, he said.

"Therefore, the first living thing which we could say unequivocally was a member of the species would be this first egg," he added. "So, I would conclude that the egg came first."

The same conclusion was reached by his fellow "eggsperts" Professor David Papineau, of King's College London, and poultry farmer Charles Bourns.

Mr Papineau, an expert in the philosophy of science, agreed that the first chicken came from an egg and that proves there were chicken eggs before chickens.

He told PA people were mistaken if they argued that the mutant egg belonged to the "non-chicken" bird parents.

"I would argue it is a chicken egg if it has a chicken in it," he said.

"If a kangaroo laid an egg from which an ostrich hatched, that would surely be an ostrich egg, not a kangaroo egg."

Bourns, chairman of trade body Great British Chicken, said he was also firmly in the pro-egg camp.

He said: "Eggs were around long before the first chicken arrived. Of course, they may not have been chicken eggs as we see them today, but they were eggs."

The debate, which may come as a relief to those with argumentative relatives, was organized by Disney to promote the release of the film "Chicken Little" on DVD.

Answer 3

The chicken came first and this is why.
If you are a christian, then according to Genesis, God created the 'beasts and birds' that is the animals themselves,and not their eggs or foetus for that matter. Therefore it would be logical to conclude that the chicken was created live,it didn't hatch from an egg.

On the other hand if ure not a christian, then logically we could say that if there is no chicken to lay and to provide heat for the hatching of the egg,then the chances of the egg hatching would be very limited.So it is more acceptable to conclude that there must have been a chicken first, which layed and warmed its egg and then hatched it for the second chicken
Either way, the chicken came first

Answer 4

The egg because somebody found a stone and put it on the couch and they had visitors and put a cushion on the egg without noticing that the egg was under the cushion then they slept on the couch and in the night it hatched and named it a chick and they put it to the police for a night at then they got it back and kept it for a pet and after a year the Chick turned into a chicken and it laid an egg and showed it to the police and they kept it . And the legend is true and it was some years ago of years ago I don't know when.

Answer 5

Some may say the chicken because without the chicken you can't lay an egg...

...others may say the egg because without the egg a chicken could not be born.

In theory, the egg came first and a chick was hatched from it, then that chick grew to be a chicken which then layed another egg and another chick and so one and so forth.

Great question but I don't think you really can get a proper answer!

:-)

Answer 6

Since the egg is a sex cell, and the sex cell evolved into being way before the much more complex chicken, the egg came first. Mystery solved.

As a side note, let's solve another ridiculous pseudophilosophical question by stating that if a tree falls in a forest, it generates sound waves whether anyone is there to hear them or not.

Answer 7

Of course the egg came first. A chicken is a bird, birds are descended from dinosaurs and dinosaurs laid eggs. So the creature that evolved into the chicken we now have has always laid eggs. As for Genesis, I prefer their earlier stuff with Peter Gabriel!

Answer 8

The egg.

If you believe the thery of Evolution through natural selection - there must have been some point where something that was not technically a chicken laid the egg that hatched into the first chicken.

Answer 9

The egg, reptiles layed eggs before chickens came along.

Answer 10

I say the egg, basic genetics here, the animal that layed the original chicken would have been close but not quite a chicken so when its offspring hatched it became what we know as the first chicken, anyone who says otherwise is either a creationast or uneductated in basic genetics