The first chicken Egg was laid by a non-chicken. However, that’s more theoretical than realistic. The mutational difference between generations of offspring isn’t enough for us to call the offspring a different species, it’s not a hard line. It’s only on a much broader scale across a population and large timeframe that they can differentiate enough to be considered a different species.
Was there ever a solid or scientific answers to which came first chicken or the egg?
Submitted 3 days ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
over_clox@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Neither the chicken nor the egg can cum.
Therefore, the rooster came first.
I hope I’ve been able to help answer your question…
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 3 days ago
It’s the egg.
The way evolution works is that offspring might suffer mutations and not be 100% a copy of their parents DNA. As such, for any concrete definition of chicken there was a non-chicken that put a chicken egg.
There’s no argument for the chicken first, because a chicken needs to come from a chicken egg, but a chicken egg does not need to come from a chicken.
zlatiah@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yes, it’s the egg. It has actually been definitely answered for almost 20 years that Wikipedia has a section on this
By most every definition of the dilemma it will be the egg which came first. The very first “egg” in our world came long before birds are a thing. If we are strictly talking about chicken eggs, since the modern chicken is a domesticated animal, strictly speaking the first true domesticated chicken came from two non-domestic chicken parents… which created a fertilized egg that became the first domesticated chicken.
bitofarambler@crazypeople.online 3 days ago
Treczoks@lemmy.world 3 days ago
If you had paid attention in school, you would know the answer. The concept of “Eggs” is way, way older than any bird.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
The rooster.
radiofreebc@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yeaaaah, here comes the rooster…oh yeah!
Patnou@lemmy.world 3 days ago
First laugh of the day. Thank you so much I am going to steal this from you…hope you don’t mind.
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
The egg is literally part of the chick until it’s hatched. It’s formed by the embryonic cells, not the maternal cells. Ergo, if the embryo is a chicken, the egg is a chicken egg, and the chicken came first.
Now, it is arguable that an embryo is merely an undeveloped eukaryotic organism until such time as it is morphologically distinct from other organisms. A cell merely bearing chicken DNA is not yet a chicken anymore than a stack of lumber and a blueprint is a house. If that is the position you’re more comfortable with, then the egg formed before the chicken.
So whether the undeveloped embryo constitutes a chicken or not is the core of the question, and no, science doesn’t have an answer to that. That’s a semantic, philosophical, and to some theological question about what constitutes a chicken.
thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Dawkins solved it time ago.
Mutations are passed into the next generation and if we assume that only chickens can laid chicken eggs then the paradox solution is as follows :
A proto chicken (soemthing extremely similar to a chicken but not yet one) laid a proto egg of which a chicken hatched and then it could laid a chicken egg.
Here there is a reduced scope version saying that proto chicken can lay eggs, which depends on the eggs definition may not be 100% acceptable
bryndos@fedia.io 3 days ago
I think it you take any example of a chicken that is alive today and were able to trace back its ancestry far enough then you'd eventually find an ancestor that most reasonable people would agree is not a chicken. And probably many of those "non-chicken" ancestors did hatch out of "non-chicken" eggs. So I think that it is most likely that some "non-chicken" egg existed before, and forms part of the direct ancestry of, every chicken that has ever lived. If that's what you're asking.
Many of the arguments to support 'chicken' being first seem to add the assumption that "egg" must mean "chicken-egg". That assumption doesn't seem reasonable to me, especially in the context of ancestry. Maybe it would be reasonable to creationists though - so frankly if someone does believe that I'd just walk away and let them "win". I'd rather find a natural history museum and see if they have any proto-chicken exhibits than waste time with people like that.
My answer is also based on extra assumptions too. I've slotted the indefinite article in to the gap "[a] chicken", and worse replaced the definite article "the" with the indefinite "an" in reference to 'the' egg. People will argue about that, but the question is ambiguous, and needs to be more specific.
'Which came first the troll or the bait?'AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The egg is the same organism as the individual that hatches out of it.
It’s like saying “which came first, the child or the adult”?
over_clox@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Donkeys and horses don’t even have the same number of chromosomes.
But they can breed, which creates a mule (which is usually infertile, but not always).
Just because animals breed doesn’t make the offspring the same species.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Just because animals breed doesn’t make the offspring the same species.
Species is a construct and falls apart very quickly outside of the common barnyard and kidsbook animals. It can be a useful construct for understanding some things, but its not a “thing” that inherently exists in biology.
We can impose an idea on organisms, but they have no obligation to follow it.
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 3 days ago
No, but the fallacy is in thinking the new species appears when the egg hatches, rather than when it’s fertilized. The egg is already the new offspring.
Patnou@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Well now that you mention it.
notsosure@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
The question is moot, as soon as you start digging into embryology and evolution.
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 3 days ago
Eggs existed before chickens. The fossil record is the scientific answer.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 3 days ago
100%. But I do want to note for those in the back seats, matrotrophy and integumentation evolved multiple times and independently in other lineages, like plants and algae. So even though plants follow the same “sperm and egg” pattern, its evolution is wholly independent. Turns out investing in the next generation is a broadly advantageous evolutionary strategy.