Which came first egg or chicken?

[Tazzay]

It definitely has to be the egg. A creature cannot form out of nothing and then start living, it has to hatch/ be born to be alive.

[Fin-Strider]

The egg.

Dinosaurs laid eggs before chickens even existed?

Edited May 21, 2013 by Fin-Strider

[cutiesonic]

It definitely has to be the egg. A creature cannot form out of nothing and then start living, it has to hatch/ be born to be alive.

Where did you think the question came from?

 

The chicken.......

 

 

To make sure someone's around to eat it! But really, I think it's the chicken.

[dawn11]

The egg.

Well, some animal laid an egg. And then somehow the animal in the egg mutated to a chicken. The chicken hatched and started to lay eggs because it is a bit similar to the animal from whose egg it hatched. Understand? I know, its a bit creepy.

[Odeen]

The egg came first. Compared to the biological concept of the egg, chickens are quite young. =3

 

Potholer54 addresses this

.

 

Really an easy question.

[7Deadly$ins]

The egg.

Well, some animal laid an egg. And then somehow the animal in the egg mutated to a chicken. The chicken hatched and started to lay eggs because it is a bit similar to the animal from whose egg it hatched. Understand? I know, its a bit creepy.

I don't really think it's creepy at all.

[Shadowdrake]

Yep, egg, according to the evolutionary theory. Bird-that-was-like-a-chicken-but-isn't laid an egg, which hatched into a chicken. Mutations don't happen randomly in life, so chickens are chickens from their eggs onwards. However, their kids and their parents are not necessarily chickens.

 

Now according to the Garden of Eden theory the chicken came first (I think, I'm not very educated in Christian religion ^^. Then eggs were laid, and babies made.

 

And if we decided to ask the dictionary it would say chickens came before eggs. Because C comes before E.

[KaelaBoo24]

I always felt that the chicken came first. It just seems more reasonable to me.

[Moonbeam22]

Well chickens come from eggs... but eggs come from chickens... and chickens come from eggs... but eggs still come from chickens.

[Kat]

I'm currently learning about evolution in science class. I'm not sure when birds came into existence though, because my science teacher didn't include it for some reason. I do know that it is something like this... 1st comes fish 2nd comes amphibians 3rd comes reptiles and 4th comes mammals. I think birds go after mammals? Maybe a mammals went through so many mutations that the bird was created? Of course, then the egg would come first, because a mutation can't happen to an animal that would so drastically change its DNA. But still, what if the chicken came first... My head hurts now from thinking too hard. I guess the chicken came first? I don't know. I just have this feeling...

[Odeen]

I'm currently learning about evolution in science class. I'm not sure when birds came into existence though, because my science teacher didn't include it for some reason. I do know that it is something like this... 1st comes fish 2nd comes amphibians 3rd comes reptiles and 4th comes mammals. I think birds go after mammals? Maybe a mammals went through so many mutations that the bird was created? Of course, then the egg would come first, because a mutation can't happen to an animal that would so drastically change its DNA. But still, what if the chicken came first... My head hurts now from thinking too hard. I guess the chicken came first? I don't know. I just have this feeling...

** WARNING! 550 million years of biology paraphrased ahead. **

 

The origin of the egg, as near as we can tell, probably sits somewhere prior to the Cambrian Explosion which predates most extant clades of life we know today. Since most organisms that many hundreds of millions of years ago were soft-bodied and rarely fossilized, we don't have much fossil evidence, but the ubiquity of the egg as a reproductive vessel almost requires it (developmental changes in organisms' evolution is exceedingly rare, unlike the formation of eyes etc).

 

From primitive fish, all of whom reproduce through soft squishy eggs of some sort in some manner, came bony fish. Some of those bony fish diverged and evolved into lobe-finned fish such as the coelecanth, which still closely resembles its ancestors. Lobe-finned fish populations further divided and some became shallow water dwellers, which forced a change in body shape, the evolution of air-breathing lungs, and the innovation of limbs that could support an organism's body weight (one such example is the transitional Tiktaalik, which shares both reptilian and fish features). Keep in mind that all of these organisms mentioned so far reproduce using some form of egg.

 

Some descendants of tiktaalik-like creatures further specialized for terrestrial life and eventually inherited a groundbreaking evolutionary adaptation - hard-shelled eggs. These eggs could keep out weather and predators and maintain a relatively constant internal environment, freeing previously amphibious organisms from their need to use bodies of water to reproduce. That is where we begin seeing a huge diversification of reptilian organisms which again divide into groups that would later become archosaurs (crocodilians, dinosaurs), lepidosaurs (lizards, snakes, etc), and theropsids (mammal-like reptiles such as the dimetrodon and their descendants, mammals, which includes us).

 

From the archosaur clade Theropoda, which includes the perennial favorite Tyrannosaurus rex but also includes very small raptor-like dinosaurs such as compsognathus and microraptor, some descendants developed feathered limbs and elongated finger bones which helped small arborial dinosaurs first glide and then fly from place to place. We call the descendants of these theropods avians, which include everything from the bird of paradise to the emu, and the common domesticated chicken as well. As far as can be reasonably shown, all of the organisms in this clade lay eggs and always have, since modern avians lay eggs, extinct dinosaurs have been shown to lay eggs, and their closest relatives (crocodilians) also lay eggs.

 

So again, the egg long, long, LONG predates the chicken.

[shadowgrr]

"I think the answer is that a circle has no beginning."

 

Quoted from Harry Potter. Yes, it wins again.

I will agree with that, no because it was on H. P. But because it's a matter of logic. (What logic can be found in a question like this, Is another matter).

Anyway, if you want a really "logical" explenation say it's the aliens...

[shadowflash]

I'm just going to pop in here and leave this here.

 

 

*Scuttles out*

[Silent_Vampire]

Me believing in a God I believe the chicken came first. God created full grown animal, not babies or eggs. So the chickens then mated and created the egg! Then Adam had the first breakfast.

[Lythe]

Well, what kind of egg...dinosaurs layed (laid? Lyed? Lay?) eggs before chickens evolved right? And even before dinosaurs came fish, which also have eggs. (All hail my knowledge coming from Nemo and other assorted movies.) So I'm going with eggs.

[Bdai]

As probably mentioned before, the question probably means and should be rephrased as, "Who came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?" because if it were any egg it would be obvious the egg came first (egg laying organisms came long before the first chicken)

 

For those who are (still) stubbornly saying, "the chicken because the egg would freeze without it" that doesn't mean the egg didn't exist in the first place, even if it was doomed to freeze. And where did the chicken come from? It must've come from somewhere

 

If we were to bring religion into this and say that God made everything, well who made God? And does that mean God made every human-made genetically altered or mutated animal in existence?

 

And if you think back to the first chicken in existence (whenever that was), where did that chicken come from? An egg, right? It wouldn't be a chicken if it didn't come from an egg...

 

Basically I'm just trying to summarize what has been said before in the ~14 pages before this for people too lazy to read everything themselves...

 

Personally I have to go with the Red Junglefowl explanation because to me it makes the most sense. It's all a matter of opinion and the definition of 'chicken egg', though.

 

*flying brain fragments*

[5icky]

IMO, not truly believing in a god..but i guess some form of higher power, i strongly believe in evolution.

I believe that there may have been a slow change from some form of reptile during the time of the dinosaurs with feathers and it evolved over a few million years into a chicken. It merely makes sense.. but then again, people used to think the world was flat.

[MasterWeavile898]

Gonna ditch all reasoning and assume that there's only the chicken and egg. No previous creatures at all, nothing to create it. They've both always existed for eternity with the chicken laying and the egg hatching. Taking those parameters we get our logic defying loop, which is what the question is basically asking

 

Now that we've got a base for our illogic, let's continue. Following along with such overused paradoxical statements as "This statement is false", there isn't technically an answer

 

So let's assume that right now, we have an egg. Let's look into it's past

(Goes from the current time to wherever we start)

Chicken lays egg

Chicken hatches from egg

Chicken lays egg

Chicken hatches from egg

Etc

 

This is pointless, but it does show an interesting pattern. Chickens hatch from eggs, eggs do not hatch chickens (a bit of faulty illogic since eggs could also be said to be laid from chickens)

 

Using this knowledge we have acquired from our illogic, we can determine that the chicken came first, otherwise eggs would hatch chickens (Just, er, make sure you are always speaking English...)

 

But I think I'll just stick to saying the frying pan came first, it's far tastier

 

With hope,

Master

 

P.S. Anyone for a chicken omelet?

[Bdai]

Using this knowledge we have acquired from our illogic, we can determine that the chicken came first, otherwise eggs would hatch chickens (Just, er, make sure you are always speaking English...)

Yes, eggs do hatch chickens...?

*brain fragments explode*

[edwardelricfreak]

If you mean specifically a chicken egg, then that would have come first, as the creatures that laid the first "chicken" eggs weren't quite yet chickens. Unless you only count a real chicken egg as coming from a true chicken, and then the chicken would have come first, as it came out of a "not-quite-chicken creature" egg that just so happened to hatch a chicken.

 

Of course, it's not like a chicken would have just happened from a not-quite-chicken creature. Even that change would have been extremely subtle and lasted for a looooong time.

 

If you mean egg in general, it came first. There were creatures laying eggs long before the chicken came into existence.

[Psycho Cat]

I am a Christian, but I can't say I'm super faithful. I do hope for life after death, but the creation theory comes off to me as, well, silly. Am I trying to be offensive? No. What you believe is your right, but I am a strong evolutionist. Whatever came before the chicken laid an egg and it hatched into a chicken.

[draganot]

Random theroy time! Which should I do, clean or not so clean...

 

Let's set this to random and see what happens

 

One day there was an explosion and tiny particles all collided in a huge empty space. The earth formed after a few million years from the particles building up on it. Eventually water was made and filled up the thing. Here was an entire world, empty it may be. Suddenly a lone human proofed into existance. He grew hungry over many days, when he finally reached a point were he went Balistic from hunger he sat down on a giant leaf and thought to himself. what would be the best thing to eat? he sat there for hours pondering on his ideas so deep into his thought that had a vision. That vision told him that in a cave 240 miles away from him was a round object, it was red and could be pushed into the rock that held it. After his long journey he reached the mysterious object, he looked at it wondering what to do. He then thought it could be food and hit it with a rock! The object was pushed into the rock and came out quickly. In the air appeared a cloud, he reached inside the cloud and pulled out something, it was small and white. He decided to call it an egg. As he was walking out of the cave he tript over a root and dropped his egg. The egg shattered into hundreds of peices leaving only a yellow ball of fuzz he called a chicken. As he wet to pick-up the chicken it jumped into the air and pecked him before runnin off. He reached out to grab it as he took his last breath and collapsed onto the ground.

 

And that children is where chickens come from, and more importantly the answer to the all important question 'which came first, the chicken or the egg?'

Edited December 27, 2013 by draganot

[Endyr_Serifi]

This is simple. An mutated egg came first then it hatched into a chicken.

[DiamondDove]

This is simple. An mutated egg came first then it hatched into a chicken.

Signed. The first so called "chicken" hatched from a special egg, the result of an evolutionary mutating process.

[DragonGirl10188]

Both.

 

 

 

 

mind = blown