what was first the chicken or the egg?

Answer 1

The Chicken. In Genesis, it says that God created the heavens and the earth and all the living things on the earth. He made the animals and plants and such... so he made the Chicken.

Answer 2

It is a question that has vexed philosophers since the Greeks. But it seems we may now have the answer to the beguilingly simple question: "Which came first?" It's the egg.

This reassuring conclusion was the work of an expert panel including a philosopher, geneticist and chicken farmer.

"Whether chicken eggs preceded chickens hinges on the nature of chicken eggs," said panel member and philosopher of science David Papineau at King's College London.

"I would argue it's a chicken egg if it has a chicken in it. If a kangaroo laid an egg from which an ostrich hatched, that would surely be an ostrich egg, not a kangaroo egg. By this reasoning, the first chicken did indeed come from a chicken egg, even though that egg didn't come from chickens."

The oldest recorded reference to the childish conundrum goes back to a collection of essays and discussions by the Greek historian Mestrius Plutarchus, born in 46AD. In a section entitled Whether the Hen or the Egg Came First he suggested that the question was already well established: "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."

Plutarchus also hinted at the puzzle's greater significance: "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."

Whether the panel solved that debate is not clear, but they were unanimous on the correct chicken/egg pecking order. John Brookfield, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Nottingham said the solution involves piecing together the speciation event in which chickens first evolved.

He imagines two non-chicken parents getting together and giving rise to the first individual of a new species because of a genetic mutation. "The first chicken must have differed from its parents by some genetic change, perhaps a very subtle one, but one which caused this bird to be the first ever to fulfil our criteria for truly being a chicken," said Prof Brookfield.

"Thus the living organism inside the eggshell would have had the same DNA as the chicken that it would develop into, and thus would itself be a member of the species of chicken," he added.

Will the panel be conducting other chicken-related enquiries, such as why did the chicken cross the road? Prof Brokfield refused to comment.

Answer 3

All biologists are in agreement on this one from a cell point-of-view. The egg came first, as the female cell that formed the very first chicken would have been considered the egg.

However, if you are specifically defining "egg" as having a hard shell, then it could be a matter of your definition of a chicken. The chicken that laid a hard egg evolved from a proto-chicken, which would have laid a soft egg that gave birth to the original chicken. If you define the proto-chicken as not being a chicken, you could argue that the chicken came first, then laid its hard egg.

But the similarities between the two creatures are so close, you could argue that the proto-chicken was a chicken, and you're back to square one in the overall scheme of things. This brings you to the argument of "speciation," meaning that evolution does not happen in simple, obvious steps. By this theory a biologist would argue that neither of them came first. What qualifies as a "chicken" involves a wide variety of genetic traits that cannot be encompassed by a single individual.

If you look at this from a Judeo-Christian theological standpoint, however, it is usually argued that the chicken came first. God created the animals on the fifth day. Then they procreated from there. But you could argue theologically from a different point of view, too, if you are Pro-Life, because from that point of view the egg IS the chicken.

From my point of view, I definitely have to say it was the chicken, because in your question the chicken is listed first. Everything above is open to debate. If you consider sentence structure, though, there is no debate in this instance. You listed chicken first and egg second. So the chicken came first in a grammatical way, unless you rephrase the question. That is the way I think is safe to argue. ;-)

Answer 4

If you believe in evolution, the egg developed first... Scientists believe that multicellular organisms developed later and unicellular ones existed first.....

cells make up tissues which make up organs and body systems which make the entire body as a single living unit with each part performing a function specific to its survival. So, technically, multicellular organisms evolved later and unicellular and simple organisms existed much earlier.

The same can be observed in the development of a new life - whether it is human or animal....at the time of conception of a mammal or bird such as a chicken, the egg has to be fertilised first. This egg is nothing but a single cell, with the yolk as the nucleus. The largest such cell is the ostritch egg. However, all eggs are a single cell.

Thus, the cell evolved before the multicellular organism or develops into it....

So jokes apart, technically speaking, the egg came before the chicken...

Answer 5

The chicken had to have evolved from another species. The egg can't have dropped from thin air!!

The female gamete can be called an egg and THAT egg is a single cell. But, this question is talking about the fertilised egg which is first a Zygote and then forms an embryo,which is definitely NOT a single cell...

Answer 6

The chicken was first. The chicken that lay the first egg was already in existence before the egg could be formed.

Answer 7

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 8

All the living species i.e. animal, human, birds and the bees, the fish or crawlers etc., were first created as fully grown male and female living beings so that they could mate for procreation to increase and multiply. So without full grown male and female bird there would be no eggs to hatch.

Answer 9

The human first because before human, nothing called "chicken" or "egg".

Answer 10

if the chicken came first who layed the egg for the chicken to come out of.
If the egg came first who layed it?
The answer to this question is there was a chiken and an egg.