McD

The chicken or the egg?

What I would like is the most smart-assed, yet scientific answer you can come up with.

I got this idea because several years ago, during a casual radio debate on E v. C, there was a moment of mirth when a caller asked this question. The evolutionist repeated the question back and answered 'a dinosaur'. Pretty good, off the cuff, but what would you guys have said?

jester2459

The answer lies in the definition of "egg." Presumably we are speaking of a chicken egg, because if not then obviously some form of egg came before a chicken.

So, either a chicken egg is an egg of a chicken, in which case the chicken came first, or a chicken egg is an egg containing that which will be a chicken, in which case the egg came first.


On the other hand, the funniest answer I've ever seen is a cartoon of a rooster in bed smoking a cigarette and the chicken beside him saying "well I guess that answers that question"

g-21-lto

Seeing as chickens have evolved from an earlier bird species, and birds evolved from dinosaurs, and eggs have been in use at least that long, I think it stands to reason that the egg came first.

However to answer the question in a more fully satisfying way, I think it's necessary to replace the word "chicken" with the words "egg-laying organism", in which case we've thrown ourselves back at least into the Paleozoic. Egg-laying reproduction accompanies sexual reproduction, so we reach the point where there's an earlier, sexual, but not egg-laying, species which gives birth, however it may have done so, to an egg-laying species. As the egg-laying species must have existed in order to lay the eggs, I conclude that the egg-laying organism came first. Replace this with "chicken" and there you go.

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Edit: a paradox!!

muidiri

Trace it back through evolution... let the "egg" be the separated reproductive method (egg cell and sperm, pollen and stamen, whatever it is that produces a separate individual and develops discretely from the parent organism) and let "chicken" be the initial organism which is doing the breeding... and we must conclude that the chicken came first. I believe the genereal consensus is that self-replicating dividing organism predate sexual reproduction between separate individuals.

Chicken comes first...

muidiri

It even works if you're a creationist... in which case god most certainly made all those darn birds before they got around to breeding and egg-laying.

Jet Black

the replicator.

braces_for_impact

A slightly different chicken-like ancestor. Repeat Ad Infintum. (Well almost)

Dhaeron

So, where does the easter bunny fit in?

_Naturalist_

I guess the egg came before any chicken was around.

epepke

The egg, of course, because there were eggs long before chickens.