Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Question

If people are saying the egg, then where did the egg come from? :-)

Answer 1

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).

If: A chicken egg will hatch a chicken and was laid by a chicken
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.

If: The question didn't specify that the egg had to be a chicken egg
Then we could easily say that the egg came first, because fish had been laying eggs long before chickens were around.

If: The chicken came first because it had to hatch the egg
Then the riddle would make more sense, but would still be debated.

Answer 2

Here's how evolution works: There is an egg formed inside a bird that is not really a chicken. It is fertilized by a male of the same species that is not really a chicken.

But, some genetic mutation occurred in the egg that made it into a chicken egg. Likely very very slightly different from the parent, but different nonetheless. When the egg hatched, it was a chicken or precurser to the chicken.

New species are formed when there is an error in the genetic code of the sperm and egg combination. There is no way the chicken could come first.

Answer 3

Maybe there were species that layed eggs before chickens. It's quite possible. Unless you were there though you will never know the absolute truth.

But egg can never be made without a physical being, it must be produced inside a body. It takes a being to produce an egg.

If we are talking about the life cycle that produced the chicken. It has to be a chicken that came first. Though not visible to us, the egg -if fertilised, when laid is an embryo. Not mere egg, as in our reproductive cycle terms. The chicken was made when fertilisation of egg & sperm took place- inside the body of another species. Its existance started that instant as a chicken. Conceived due to some kind of genetic anomaly between the egg & sperm, the building blocks of the chickens existance.

It's the same as the fact that a human embryo/foetus is a human. Despite the fact they can't sustain themself, without their natural gestational environment encasing them, until physically mature enough to- they are still human!

Answer 4

The egg

Answer 5

The chicken evolved into a chicken from a something else, then the chicken laid the egg. Well, that's just a guess but it makes sense!

Answer 6

We know from fossils that dinosaurs were laying eggs millions of years before we had chickens... birds (and hence chickens) evolved from dinosaurs. So it follows that the egg came first.

Answer 7

I would have to say the chicken. Because of evolution, when you think about it, millions of years ago a chicken was a completely different organism, and say that organism laid eggs. This means that eventually this organism had to evolve, which species evolve from mutations in their offspring, so if it laid an egg and it came out the first chicken, then the egg came before the chicken.

Answer 8

Hard calcified eggs (chicken-type eggs) evolved 210 million years ago. They slowly evolved from soft, leathery type eggs. Domestic chickens have been with us only a few thousand years, being the product of man's artificial selection from guinea fowl ancestors.

Answer 9

The egg of course......nobody eats chicken for breakfast!

Answer 10

it was the egg because whatever the chicken evolved from was inside the egg