What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Answer 1

This all depends upon what you mean by "the egg." There seem to be three distinct possibilities:

1. The egg from which the specific chicken in question was hatched. A lot of people have answered as if this is what the question clearly means by "the egg," but I'm not sure the assumption is correct. In any case, on this view, the egg must have come first -- since it is, by definition, that egg from which this chicken was hatched.

2. The egg as such. This seems a lot less likely, but remains possible, and someone who held this definition of "the egg" in the question would have to answer that there were eggs (of one sort or another -- ostrich eggs, dinosaur eggs, fish eggs, etc.) long before there were chickens.

3. The chicken egg. This is my favorite possibility, but people very rarely consider it. Here, one takes the famous question to be asking, "Which came first: the first individual of the bird species we call 'chicken', or the first egg from which those birds typically spring?" In this case, we must answer that, of the two, the chicken almost certainly came first. As others have noted, the egg from which the very first chicken hatched could not have been a chicken egg -- it was the egg of some other bird, very closely related to (evolutionarily and familiarly speaking) but not identical with that chicken. The first individual of the chicken species was a random mutation within another species (which we'll call "proto-chicken"), one individual member of which layed the egg that hatched the mutant chicken. The first chicken did not hatch from a chicken egg, but a proto-chicken egg.

Answer 2

The egg came first. Just like how you breed different dogs, the chicken was the result of cross-breeding between different bird species.

Example: A turkey and a chicken mate, and an egg is laid.
What hatches from the egg is not a turkey or a chicken. It's a completely different species.

That is what happened to create the first egg from which a chicken hatched, except from different birds rather than birds from the above example.

Answer 3

The egg.
Simply because a chicken has to hatch out of an egg, therefore the egg existed first to hatch the chicken.
In which case the egg would have been laid by a bird very similar but not quite a chicken, simple mutation and evolution.

Answer 4

It had to be the chicken to make the egg because that would speed up the process or maybe there were two chickens or one chicken and one egg.

Answer 5

This is one of my favorite questions. The answer depends on your beliefs. If you believe in evolution the egg came first, as it came from a chicken-like bird. If you believe in creation the chicken came first, as it was created by a supreme being.

Answer 6

Update: This goes out to shakespearean: It's funny you should mention that your 3rd choice is the one most people don't even consider. Points 1 and 2 of your answer have NEVER entered my mind as possibilities. I've only ever considered this question in terms of "the first ever chicken" or "the first ever chicken egg." And I've been contemplating this question for well over 30 years. ; ) I like your analyses.

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The egg, since it's what's for breakfast. The chicken is for dinner.

lol ikaffy! Rooster!

Answer 7

If you think about it, the chicken evolved from a creature (probably quite like it), and so after many generations some of the creatures gave birth to the chickens we know today, who came from eggs.

Answer 8

Chicken, because it starts with C and egg starts with E.

Answer 9

That's easy. The chicken, because an egg could not survive if it didn't have a chicken to nuture it and make it hatch. An egg could not survive on it's own.

Answer 10

While it does seem puzzling at first, it was neither. The predacessor of the chicken and egg was a 'proto-chicken' which was neither a chicken nor an egg. Mutations of the proto-chicken caused it to emit eggs to procreate.