The Egg or the Chicken: Which Came First?

[hexhunter]

which came first?

the egg or the chicken?

am i right to say the Egg, as it's parents were not actually Chickens...

sorry if this is a really simple question...

 

[JamesU]

Nobody can say. It only seems reasonable that the chicken would come first though. If it was an egg, it'd need something to care for it until it hatches.

 

[hexhunter]

yes, the chicken's mother would, but the point is that the chickens mother isn't a chicken, because the new species has only just started...

 

[hypatia]

I wonder if it tasted like chicken?

 

[iansmith]

In the terms of evolution, the egg came first. There's fossile of eggs before birds appear.

 

[neurocomp2003]

hard to say with evolution...
cuz you could have it that the mutation happened at birth(the egg)
OR the mutation happened by environemental factor(the chicken)

 

[quetzalcoatl9]

hard to say with evolution...
cuz you could have it that the mutation happened at birth(the egg)
OR the mutation happened by environemental factor(the chicken)

even if the mutation happened to the adult (due to environmental factors, etc.) it wouldn't matter though, since once the adult cells are developed they change very little. and regardless, if the sex cells did not have the mutation then the offspring wouldn't either. more likely is that the sex cells would undergo the mutation, and the mutation would not be expressed until the next generation (i.e. the egg).

 

[JamesU]

first- chicken


yes it did


yep


uh huh...

you know it's true

 

[neurocomp2003]

quetzal: when you say adult cells-what age? I'm talking like infant mutations

 

[Almeisan]

Its simple. There was once an almost-chicken laying almost-chicken eggs.

Then a mutation occured, an almost-chicken lay an egg with a mutated fertilized cell inside, it had a chicken inside.

Now why do you call a chicken egg an chicken egg? Because it is layed by a chicken or because it gives birth to a chicken?

If its the first then we call this egg still almost-chicken egg. But after a while the egg cracks open and a baby chicken emerges. So there we have it, chicken first, egg second. This chicken will go on to lay chicken eggs giving birth to little chickens.

Or for the other definition, we call this a chicken egg. So there we have it, a chicken first, then the chicken itself.

Of course because of the evolutionary advantage the chicken had over the almost-chicken, the almost chicken died out.

 

[Phobos]

(1) As iansmith pointed out, eggs were around long before chickens. But I assume your questions is "which came first, the chicken or the chicken-egg?" Which brings to to my next point...
(2) It's a senseless question. Speciation does not happen in 1 individual in 1 generation. Speciation is a whole population shift (or subpopulation) occurring over many generations. It was not the case that an AlmostChicken mom had a mutation and her egg was official Chicken. The transition was a gray area...and it would be unlikely that we could identify a particular point in time where the change occurred. It is very likely that we would still name AlmostChicken as Chicken. (Chicken is a just a general term...you would need to examine the scientific species/subspecies naming. Even then, the transition would not be instantaneous. The point is that it takes a broad population shift.)

 

[Phobos]

Of course because of the evolutionary advantage the chicken had over the almost-chicken, the almost chicken died out.

Note that speciation does not necessitate the extinction of the ancestral line. If it did, there would be only 1 species on Earth.