• Question: what came first the chiken or the egg?

    Asked by rattana1992 to Betul, Bridget, Ceri-Wyn, Laurel, Maria on 14 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Maria Pawlowska

      Maria Pawlowska answered on 13 Jun 2010:

      The boring evolutionary answer is that the egg evolved before birds did so I would have to say egg.

    • Photo: Betul Arslan

      Betul Arslan answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Philosophers’ paradox! I don’t know the answer but I can tell you that someone actually designed experiments to test this paradox. Their empirically tested answer is : Chicken came first!

      Here: http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i4/chicken_egg.html

      Now, don’t you love scientists?

    • Photo: Bridget Waller

      Bridget Waller answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      I actually found myself pondering this as I walked to work this morning…I go with chicken. If we are talking about a specific chicken egg, and as birds evolved from reptiles, then there must have been a bird type thing that mutated and turned into a chicken before it made a chicken egg… I think we could go round in circles with this, I’ll stop now…

    • Photo: Laurel Fogarty

      Laurel Fogarty answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      the chicken….no the egg… Oh man, I am not able to answer such deep questions first thing on a monday…

    • Photo: Ceri-Wyn Thomas

      Ceri-Wyn Thomas answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Ah that old question! My answer is that the EGG came first and here’s why:

      Firstly- did you now that birds are actually dinosaurs? Honestly- they are related to Therapod dinosaurs to be precise- like T-Rex! Birds and Dinosaurs belong to the larger Archosaur family and there’s loads of evidence to show that birds branched off from the more classic-looking dinos in the Mesozoic era (when dinosaurs roamed the planet) Google ‘Bird-dinosaur evolution- and you should find some good links.

      Recent research has shown that therapod dinosaurs like T-rex had the same ‘reproductive strategies’ as modern female birds. Both organisms develop tissue called ‘medullary’ bone which helps to create……EGGSHELLS! So the earliest birds, just like their therapod dinosaur relatives, were oviparous- they laid eggs instead of giving birth to live young.

      So, when the chicken eventually came on the scene- having branched off from other bird ancestors (the other dinosaurs were probably long gone by this time) it would have been born from an egg.

      Recent research shows that the chicken was probably a hybrid arising from the red and grey junglefowl. So when these two junglefowl got together- a genetic mutation would have caused their offspring to have, what we consider to be, chicken-like characteristics. Perhaps this first chicken didn’t look exactly like the chickens we see on farms today- but as this organism interbred and introduced it’s ‘chicken’ mutations into the gene pool, more and more chicken like bids would have been born and retained through surviving the filter of ‘natural selection’- eventually creating the chicken as we know and love it today!! Hurrah!

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