What comes first the chicken or the egg?

Question

Does anybody really know?

Answer 1

It does sound puzzling at first, but how much does one have to think until one realizes that both chicken and egg must necessarily have come from something that is neither a chicken nor an egg? This answer was knowable centuries before biology came about, yet people assumed there was some unsolvable mystery behind the issue.



The modern chicken is generally believed to be a descendant of "Archaeopteryx", the oldest known bird. This 150 million year old resident of the Jurassic period laid eggs, and at some point of time, evolved into an animal that was one generation away from being a proper chicken.



"The egg came first.


DNA mutations occur in the early stages of life of organisms. As you know, when new cells divide, the DNA within the nucleus separates nucleotides and duplicates, then two new helix are formed. The amino acids responsible for mitosis are prone to make mistakes to the genetic architecture-- a beautiful system of flaws that cause evolution and diversity in species. It's like the reason why children will look like their parents, but not approximately, they are a combination of both parent's ancestor genetic history and the result of new combinations in the DNA helix.


So according to fossil research, before the chicken was the "proto-chicken" and this bird was almost chicken, but not quite. Well this proto-chicken laid an egg with a mutation, and the interior change of the DNA was enough that the exterior of the new bird could be thought of as a new species.


The first chicken had to hatch from a chicken egg to qualify to be a chicken, so the egg came first.

Answer 2

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

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.

or god created the chicken to help man kind survive, and obviously for the chicken to survive, it had to be able to eveolve in life, so god created the chicken and for it to reproduce, in which we get the egg.
me personally, i prefer the religous way.

Answer 4

The egg. Evolution says that an animal would have children that were slightly different from them. A chicken like creature would lay a egg that would hatch to be an early chicken.

Answer 5

it depends on what view you take if u take a chirstian view on it then god created everything which means he created both the chicken and the egg at the same time. If you look at it from an athiest view then (sorry i dont do much science) the bird the chicken evoled from would adapt itself untill one day a chicken would hatch showing that the egg of a chicken would come first

Answer 6

Eggs need chicken to hatch. So its chicken. Eggs left alone will not turn into chicken. Probability would be that when egg first come along without chicken, there will be no chicken at all. So chicken should come first.

Answer 7

There could be two options:

a. The chicken evolved from a different species (which could mean either)

or b. Lightning is known to have chemicals which if used in conjunction with other chemicals can possibly create a living being (the egg)

update: It's a. the answer is the egg comes first. Go to this link: http://science.howstuffworks.com/question85.htm

Answer 8

I agree with Spaz. God created a chicken and a rooster first. God said to them, "be fruitful and multiply". You HAVE to have a chicken to have an egg. Therefore, the chicken came before the egg. The egg coming before the chicken is like an embryo coming before the mother. It's just not possible on it's own to live on its own.

Answer 9

w-wwait!!
it doesn't say the egg is a chicken egg...!
it just mentioned "egg or chicken"!...
so it depends if the egg the question refers to is a chicken egg or just an egg...
it could be a duck egg or a dinosaur egg or quail egg or whatever the egg is from...
if you analyze the question, it's not really answerable because you don't know what the egg is a product of.
i hear that question since i was a kid. but i just hear them say "what comes first, the CHICKEN or the EGG?"

Answer 10

The egg. Dinosaurs were laying eggs long before chickens started pecking about.