Chicken or the Egg: Answered

[Hamma]

http://www.physorg.com/news67829669.html

[Peacemaker]

Ah yes, Hamma s for a chick and egg story.... why? I have no idea. You shouldnt ask though, the answer may shock you.... hold on a tick this is PSU, nothing can honestly shock any of us.

[Rbstr]

That's the same answer I would have given.

Except, evolution doesn't happen like that, you couldn't pick up a bird(egg) from a million years ago and say: "This is the first chicken(egg)".

The smallest unit that can evolve is a population - that's a group of animals of the same species that breed. A population of Pre-chickens is going to become more and more modern chicken like over a period of time, but at no point is there going to be a difined pre-chicken to modern-chicken transition.

[Derfud]

Like rbstr, I've been saying this for years.

[Electrofreak]

I don't think there is any real, indisputable and defineable point where, whatever there was before a chicken, turned into a chicken. Evolution is such a slow process. It's like saying, at what point did an ape give birth to a "human"? I don't think you can define it that way. Some things are such a gradient you can only highlight a section of the gradient and state that "this is the area where it changed from one definition to the other".

It's like taking the color purple, and slowly removing the color red from it. Is there any specific point where it stops being purple and becomes blue? Most blues have small amounts of red in them. Or, at what point does removing yellow turn it into green? Perhaps artists have created a reference point to state "this is where it starts becoming this color" in the same way scientists will state "this is the point where apes became humans" but that's all it is, a reference point. The change itself was actually much more undefined.

So while I guess I'd agree, the egg came first, if you're using that embryo as the reference point for when whatever-creature became a chicken, fine, but I don't think anybody can technically pin it down to a single birth specifically.

Edit- Bah. I just read Rob's post. Damn you! That was my idea!

[Phantomgate]

I posted this topic before and said the same thing.

The egg was first.... why? Because dinosaurs have been laying eggs way before chickens... so yeah.

[Jaged]

Originally Posted by Phantomgate

I posted this topic before and said the same thing.

The egg was first.... why? Because dinosaurs have been laying eggs way before chickens... so yeah.

Its understood that the phrase refers to a chicken egg.


And while it is true that there is no specific point where the creature that evolved into a chicken became a chicken and not that creature, the chicken was created eventually. And every single step of the way the egg came first. It is a gradient, but before every change occurred the creature was an egg. The egg did come first.