Quake3World

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

If a chicken hatches from an egg. How could it come before the egg? If the egg comes from the chicken. How could it exist without a chicken?

After this one, we can ask some real tough questions.

the egg:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question85.htm

"This question appears regularly in the question file, so let's take a shot at it.

In nature, living things evolve through changes in their DNA. In an animal like a chicken, DNA from a male sperm cell and a female ovum meet and combine to form a zygote -- the first cell of a new baby chicken. This first cell divides innumerable times to form all of the cells of the complete animal. In any animal, every cell contains exactly the same DNA, and that DNA comes from the zygote.

Chickens evolved from non-chickens through small changes caused by the mixing of male and female DNA or by mutations to the DNA that produced the zygote. These changes and mutations only have an effect at the point where a new zygote is created. That is, two non-chickens mated and the DNA in their new zygote contained the mutation(s) that produced the first true chicken. That one zygote cell divided to produce the first true chicken.

Prior to that first true chicken zygote, there were only non-chickens. The zygote cell is the only place where DNA mutations could produce a new animal, and the zygote cell is housed in the chicken's egg. So, the egg must have come first. "

so the answers the egg ? ;]

Damn... Chupa beat me to it.

He is right, it's the egg, for the very reasons mentioned.

first i eat the chicken and then i eat his leg.

(old beastie boys)

CaseDogg wrote:first i eat the chicken and then i eat his leg.

(old beastie boys)

Poor beasties....they had it ALL wrong. Not even one mention of an egg.

losCHUNK wrote:so the answers the egg ? ;]

Yes, but it doesn't encompass an explanation for how the egg came to be in itself, as a mechanism.

It can be explained, but this particular answer doesn't do it.

That doesnt matter for the question at hand. Regardless of where it came from, before the fertilized egg was capable of forming into what we call a chicken it was still there in another form. Sooner or later mutations caused the next generation of offspring to be a "chicken", but before that they were just "pre-chickens" so the egg that was the chicken egg came first.

Still, I would find it quite interesting to see how specifically the "egg" developed, from the first pools of lipids and gasses that formed the first cell-like structures...

Right. It's implied that the question is asking, "Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?"

Either way, the egg came first. However, it sort of hinges on the definition of "chicken egg". Is an egg specifically a chicken egg because it gives rise to a chicken, or because it was LAID by a chicken?

In the former case, the egg comes first.
In the latter case, the chicken comes first.

I think the term should refer to an egg giving rise to a chicken, but some weirdos out there might think otherwise.

Well, would a chicken egg be one that when it hatches a chicken comes out, or would it be one that came from a chicken?

That's what I was asking... semantics can confuse the issue. Personally I happen to think of it as being the egg which hatches a chicken.

Foo wrote:

losCHUNK wrote:so the answers the egg ? ;]

Yes, but it doesn't encompass an explanation for how the egg came to be in itself, as a mechanism.

It can be explained, but this particular answer doesn't do it.

WOW! That was a quick response to my question. I like the Scientific answer for which came first, and how the chicken came to be. But as quoted above, this hits a little more for what I was going for. If something is born of an egg. Where did the egg come from? How was it formed?

All things were created by our lord, thus the chicken came first, it was given to Adam so he could have eggs and McNuggets.

Headshot wrote:

Foo wrote:

losCHUNK wrote:so the answers the egg ? ;]

Yes, but it doesn't encompass an explanation for how the egg came to be in itself, as a mechanism.

It can be explained, but this particular answer doesn't do it.

WOW! That was a quick response to my question. I like the Scientific answer for which came first, and how the chicken came to be. But as quoted above, this hits a little more for what I was going for. If something is born of an egg. Where did the egg come from? How was it formed?

Well, I dont think you'll get an answer of it just happening. The egg evolved over millions of years, so it would come down to what exactly is defined by "egg" and notice the first instance of its occurrence in history. Then go up one generation and see the precursor and the change that caused the egg to form, and poof! There's the answer.

Headshot wrote:

Foo wrote:

losCHUNK wrote:so the answers the egg ? ;]

Yes, but it doesn't encompass an explanation for how the egg came to be in itself, as a mechanism.

It can be explained, but this particular answer doesn't do it.

WOW! That was a quick response to my question. I like the Scientific answer for which came first, and how the chicken came to be. But as quoted above, this hits a little more for what I was going for. If something is born of an egg. Where did the egg come from? How was it formed?

The egg evolved in the same way the chicken did. However, if you want to go all the way back, and ask the question of how the ovum came to be in the first place, I'm not sure that's really known.

The most obvious theory I would have is that the ovum appeared from a faulty mitotic division, resulting in an additional round of division which caused the DNA content to be cut in half. That would be the original appearance of a haploid cell. Reconstituting the ploidy number to 2n by using another cell's genetic material would increase the diversity in that cell's daughters, and that's where the natural selection comes in.

How that led to sexual reproduction where haploid cells from one organism got together with cells from another, though, I can't say.

edit: the egg may also have appeared first in plants, because they are able to tolerate high ploidy numbers better than animals. The original egg may not have been haploid at all. Really, though, I have no idea.