which comes first? the chicken or the egg?

Question

:)

Answer 1

The act of mating ;o)

Answer 2

The egg. This CNN article from May explains:

Chicken and egg debate unscrambled

Egg came first, 'eggsperts' agree

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 Egg came first!

Answer 4

History of the problem

The earliest reference to the dilemma is found in Plutarch's Moralia, in the books titled "Table Talk," in a series of arguments based on questions posed in a symposium. Under the section entitled, "Whether the hen or the egg came first," the discussion is introduced in such a way as to suggest that the origin of the dilemma was even older:

"...the problem about the egg and the hen, which of them came first, was dragged into our talk, a difficult problem which gives investigators much trouble. And Sulla my comrade said that with a small problem, as with a tool, we were rocking loose a great and heavy one, that of the creation of the world..."

Various answers have been formulated in response to the question, many of them humorous.

As suggested by the alternative definitions and solutions given below, the chicken-or-egg dilemma has multiple semantic variants and can thus be viewed as an exercise in semantics. Regarding at least two of these variants, the field of biology contains decisive contextual information. Although the problem has been around in one form or another for millennia, making it difficult or impossible to know who first "solved" it, the biological information needed to resolve all of the obvious semantic variants has only been available for decades.

A modern analysis covering all of the major variants was authored by Christopher Langan, published in 2001 on the Mega Foundation website[1], and subsequently included in his book of essays, The Art of Knowing [1]. It appeared again in The Improper Hamptonian [2], was included in abbreviated form in a 2001 Long Island Newsday Q&A column featuring Langan [3], and was compactly summarized in Langan's 2001 Popular Science interview.

A CNN article on May 26, 2006 featured an analysis, according to which the egg came first [2]. The key criteria on which CNN bases its answer, involving relatively recent findings from reproductive and evolutionary biology, are identical to several of those cited in the prior analysis.

[edit] Assuming a chicken egg

In this case, the egg is assumed to be a chicken's egg. This is an obvious assumption since the question itself implies a link between the two.

If one assumes the egg to be a chicken egg then one must define what a chicken egg is:

* If: A chicken egg will hatch a chicken

Then a bypass is allowed: An animal that was not a chicken laid the chicken egg which contained the first chicken. In this case the egg came first.

* If: A chicken egg is the egg that a chicken lays

Then a bypass is allowed: A chicken (that hatched from a non-chicken egg) laid an egg (a chicken egg). In this case the chicken came first.

* If: A chicken egg will hatch a chicken and A chicken egg is the egg that a chicken lays

Then there may be an error of definition. If the definition of "chicken" used does not refer to "chicken eggs", then the chicken must come first, because without chickens there cannot be any chicken eggs.

[edit] Biological Answers

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. The concept of species is an abstraction intended to categorize a broad swath of genomes and their subsequent phenomes. If one were to do away with approximate categories, each individual 'chicken' actually represents a unique genotype. Under this definition, if a 'chicken' possessing genome A were to lay an egg possessing genome B, then an egg of genome B is antecedent to an animal possessing genome B and that the parent--genome A--is antecedent to, yet different from the egg of genome B. Hence, in an absolute sense, the egg came before the 'chicken.'

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 grey 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.

Possibly, if life originated from an ooze or protozoa of some type, at first there may only have been cellular life that used division as a reproductive method but as multicellular creatures evolved, mutation led to sexes differentiating. Division of the reproductive task into sexual roles took the form of an ovum / fertilization sequence. The egg was therefore present at the same time as the creature that gestated/layed it, speciation into birds or turtles happens much later with such a scenario.

[edit] It's Academic

There is one common answer that over 75 million people agree upon. People fluent in the Thai (Thailand) language will tell you that the first character or letter of the Thai alphabet is ก or "gaw" and is represented by a picture of a chicken. The second letter of the Thai alphabet is ข or "kaw" and is represented by the picture of an egg. So, this riddle for these people is a no brainer. The chicken came first and then came the egg.

[edit] Theological answers

According to creationists who believe in Biblical inerrancy, birds were created "on the fifth day" as adolescents or adults. Since there is no reference to the creation of eggs, they presumably were then made by chickens afterwards by the normal process. Therefore, the chicken came first.

Alternatively, for those who accept the intelligent design form of creationism, Eugene Volokh has noted that "In my experience, most creationists are also pro-life -- in which case, the egg is a chicken."

Answer 5

What a silly riddle..

The egg of course. Dinosaurs laid eggs before the chicken evolved.

Answer 6

It depends on the person's view of thinking. If he believes in the Creation, he will answer chicken. God created the animals and told them to multiply. If he believes in the evolution he will answer egg.

Answer 7

The chicken leaned back against the headboard and lit a cigarette. The egg - looking rather disgusted - rolled over and said, "Well, I guess we've answered THAT question."

Answer 8

Bibically, animal and man were created first. After the sin of eating the forbidden apple, we were cursed with the pain of "offspring". Thus, chicken laid egg!

Answer 9

without the chicken there won't be an egg.

Answer 10

Ofcourse chicken...

Try this logic.

It is said that God created a man and a woman first. They produced children in the course of time. this is how God could have created Hen and **** first.. Then they could laid egg...

Answer 11

Allah has created every thing in pairs,It is impossible to say that EGG came first, Adam & Hawa Came first then the all men and women came after that, also every creature came first then their children.So it is the clear proof that Hen & **** came first.