What came first, the chicken or the egg?
This is a cute little anecdote that has been passed on from generation to generation like a recessive gene. It is based on simple logic spawned from observations made in an extremely restricted temporal reference. It suggests, of the chicken and the egg, that one had to have come before the other. Such a suggestion disregards evolutionary change and is easily undermined when a much broader temporal reference is considered. Human perception of time on a geologic scale is vague at best. On the same token, to comprehend the Evolutionary Theory is equally mystifying for some people, and because of this, questions like the one above continue to be asked in spite of reason and overwhelming evidence. There is no “first” chicken or egg along a continuum of change. To learn more about the wonderful world of science, read this essay on the Nature of Science. Back to Top There are four states of matter…
A. The egg. The process of ontogeny predates the chicken by several million years. One might also interpret this question to mean a specific “chicken egg” or “egg which contains a small chicken” in which case the answer remains the same, assuming that by “chicken” we mean a specific morphology recognised by the standard systems of biological nomenclature and taxonomy — in this situation, an animal whose morphology differed from the taxonomy (even by a very subtle measure) would at some point lay an egg from which an animal whose morphology matched the taxonomy exactly would emerge. Q.E.D.
Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg. Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal’s life. Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg. Professor John Brookfield, a specialist in evolutionary genetics at the University of Nottingham, told the UK Press Association the pecking order was clear. The living organism inside the eggshell would have had the same DNA as the chicken it would develop into, he said. “Therefore, the first living thing which we could say unequivocally was a member of the species would be this first egg,” he added. “So, I would conclude that the egg came first.” The same conclusion was reached by his fellow “eggsperts” Professor David Papineau, of King’s College London, and poultry farmer Charles Bourns.
This is a good question, and one that has plagued mankind for centuries. Indeed, which did come first? On one side, you have the egg advocates, who say that you cannot have a chicken unless it hatched from an egg. On the other side of the debate are the right-wing chicken experts, who say that you cannot have an egg unless a chicken lays it. I can answer this question very simplyno other animal described in the creation account in Genesis began in the embryonic stage. It is safe to assume that God created the chicken first and then the eggs were sure to come. Just remember: dont count your chickens before theyre hatched.
