Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? And why? (I have a feeling this will spur a creation/evolution debate).

Cecil answered that question in 'More of the Straight Dope'... I quote him directly.

There are two answers to this question, P., one serious, one retarded. Let's start with the former.

(1) The egg came first. We know that chickens evolved from some earlier, non-chickenoid form of life, e.g., the half-bird, half-reptile Archaeopteryx. These non-chickens, however, arrived in eggs. Ergo, eggs were on the scene before chickens.

(2) The chicken came first because (sigh) the chicken had to get laid before the egg could. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Cecil and Evolution to the rescue again! Thanks Elijah.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

It was undoubtably the rooster.

Boy, I bet it's been answered on the net before hundreds of times in hundreds of ways.

But the real answer is easy. The chicken came first because the egg is a presumptuous chicken, and the real comes before the presumptuous.

PS: We also don't need another creation/evolution debate. There are thousands of messages on this already.

Reminds me of a joke:

A chicken and an egg are relaxing after sex. The egg is smoking a cigarette and says with a pissed off look, "Well, I guess we know the answer to that question!"



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whammy.

Huh? How can a chicken and egg have sex together?

Sheeesh, George. I'm constantly surprised by how anal retentive some people's sense of humor is. Even if you insist on jokes being rational, it would still be funny if you employed a little imagination.

PapaBear, don't call me anal retentive. If you want to flame people, do it in the BBQ pit, not in the GQ forum.

I don't insist on rational jokes and have a good imagination. I enjoyed Whammy's joke, even though the situation didn't quite seem feasible.

Georgie, georgie... I've enjoyed interacting with ya before, but...

You let this thread sit for a week and then you come back bitching about a possible flame from Papa? Sheesh!
Though you may not be a troll, this thread topic is definitely "troll-worthy" in that it is offered merely as a tool for you to "come back" at respondants.
Picking at humorous posts in a thread you created, addressing a subject already put to bed by Cecil (he is the final authority, and not accepting that is, in itself, a troll-like trait) is also symptomatic of trolls.

Caution is advised, my friend. "Troll" is not a label you want attached to your sig.

[Markxxx]

The egg came first. An egg is defined by what is in it. NOT by what laid it or what it came out of. For example a mule is born from a Mule egg. But it is the product of a horse and donkey. Neither is a MULE.

[NanoByte]

That's obviously a *cross* product, not a *dot* product, right? What's gone on here is enough to scare the horses. Mules weren't in the question. Mules come from the footwear department.

Ray

[the first supraliminal]

I prefer mine scrambled.



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[Jophiel]

Just to elaborate on Markxxx's answer:

Imagine there are no chickens and as a result, no chicken eggs. However, we do have some proto-chicken wandering about, the foremother of what shall become the chicken. Said proto-chicken gets knocked up, and the while the egg is in creation, it undergoes a few mutations and comes out something that will eventually hatch into the first chicken. So, it is a chicken egg. Now granted, this is rather simplified, but I'd have to say that the egg came first.

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"I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn't."

[voltaire]

Doesn't an egg require incubation in order to hatch? If there weren't any chickens around, the egg wouldn't have had much of a chance of hatching. This of course assuming that the egg didn't magicly appear next to some other constant heat-source that was approximately the same temperature as a chicken.

BTW, what's up with those brown eggs? Are there any differences in the egg or is it just a different color shell? Anybody else besides me just to fraidy-cat to try them?
(I hardly thought this question was worthy of its own forum, and figured this one could use a little pick-me-up anyway)

[Nickrz]

A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg.

[TubaDiva]

BTW, what's up with those brown eggs? Are there any differences in the egg or is it just a different color shell? Anybody else besides me just to fraidy-cat to try them?

What the heck, eat a brown shelled egg, take a walk on the wild side!

IIRC (been a while since I been on the farm), eggshell color is determined by what hens are fed. The particular breed of the chicken may have something to do with it as well.

There's no difference, nutritional or otherwise, between white and brown hen's eggs -- except that brown eggs tend to be more expensive. Some people believe that brown eggs are "organic" or healthier and thus are suckered into paying higher prices for the same henfruit.

your humble TubaDiva
Today a brown egg . . . tomorrow . . . who knows? We're living dangerously!

[Jophiel]

Doesn't an egg require incubation in order to hatch? If there weren't any chickens
around, the egg wouldn't have had much of a chance of hatching

Don't be silly, of course it would. Our proto-chicken would sit on it. Heck, different birds incubate different eggs all the time. If it had to be Bird A sitting on Bird A's egg, then the cowbird would of died out long ago.

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"I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn't."

[mr john]

Shell color depends more on breed than anything else,though pigments in the feed do influence the shade. So the yolks on you tuba.The feed definatly influences the yolk.there is nothing quite so bright and yellow as a free range chicken's yolk.
Which came first? On earth? The lesser god remoth stole an egg from the great god Meersham. in attempting to escape remoth dropped the egg,it fell through space hitting the moon. the egg broke and spewed forth upon the Earth all the plants and creatures that dwell there. Thought Id register in for the creationists.
" A chicken and an egg are relaxing after having sex." What a foul, disgusting mind you have ,Whammy. There is a thread about incest for people like you!

[AvoGadra]

The question "what came first, the chicken or the egg?" does not say "what came first, the chicken or the chicken's egg". Dinosaurs laid eggs long before chickens existed, so the egg came before the chicken. If you are trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the chicken's egg, you would have to decide at which point in the chickens evolution it became the chicken of today. Then, the parent would not be a chicken, but, having laid a chicken egg, the egg would survive and hatch. Therefore, again, the egg came before the chicken.
As to the question about the color of the egg, I own chickens, and it is only the shell that is a different color because of the breed of chicken. The egg itself is basically the same.

[Arnold Winkelried]

Someone already quoted this column, but I'll provide a link to it anyway.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

More semi-related information here.

Which end of the egg comes out of the chicken first? (Week of: 29-Mar-96)

[Special Creationist Hat ON]

In the Bible, it says that God created birds on the fifth day, so therefore the chicken came first.

originally posted by the Lord God Almighty:
Gen 1:20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky."
Gen 1:21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
Gen 1:22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth."
Gen 1:23 And there was evening, and there was morning--the fifth day.

[Special Creationist Hat OFF]





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"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!" - the White Queen

[tomndebb]

" A chicken and an egg are relaxing after having sex." What a foul, disgusting mind you have ,Whammy. There is a thread about incest for people like you!

Wouldn't have to be incest, just pædophilia.


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Tom~

Just wanted to point out that Mr. John posted that way back on 8-13-99. Remember 1999? Before Y2K?

Is he even still around?

Also wanted to know why this thread has been resurrected. Is it because it's the Easter season?




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"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!" - the White Queen

[AWB]

I heard the answer on a sitcom last night... it was a tie.

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Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded. You'll find it an effective combination.

[tony1234]

Originally posted by Jophiel:
Just to elaborate on Markxxx's answer:

Imagine there are no chickens and as a result, no chicken eggs. However, we do have some proto-chicken wandering about, the foremother of what shall become the chicken. Said proto-chicken gets knocked up, and the while the egg is in creation, it undergoes a few mutations and comes out something that will eventually hatch into the first chicken. So, it is a chicken egg. Now granted, this is rather simplified, but I'd have to say that the egg came first.

Well, there's certainly room for debate. A case can be made that its what produced the egg, not what comes from it that established the nature of the egg. You crack open the egg from a proto-chicken and there's nothing inside. It's an empty proto-chicken egg, not a full "nothing egg." You crack it open an a diamond falls out, a diamond in a proto-chicken egg. You crack it open and a mini-person hops out: A person in a proto-chicken egg! What about before it hatches. It is an open question what type of egg it is? I'm not saying these considerations are conclusive, just that it's fairly debatable.

Tony



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Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: the starry skies above me and the moral law within me. -- Kant

[Twizzlers_13]

Well, that's EASY!!! The egg came first. Dinosaurs laid eggs, way before chickens came into play.

[handy]

An egg is a presumptuous chicken, and the real comes before the presumptuous, thus, the chicken before the egg.

[Smeghead]

Originally posted by curious george:
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

The ribozyme.
Actually, I think a more interesting question would be: which came first, the ribozyme or the mycelle?

[DrMatrix]

The question assumes that you can tell a chicken from a non-chicken. While this may seem reasonable. I think this is a problem. When we look at animals that exist today, there is a big difference between chicken and non-chicken, but they (chickens) evolved slowly from "proto-chickens". I don't think you have a definite line between the chickens and the proto-chickens. The whole idea of classification was created by man.

There is no answer because you cannot distinguish chicken from non-chicken.

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Virtually yours,

"Feynman was wrong.
I understand Quantum Physics completely.
Anybody seen my drugs?" - A WallyM7™ .sig

[Cartooniverse]

Originally posted by TubaDiva:
What the heck, eat a brown shelled egg, take a walk on the wild side!

IIRC (been a while since I been on the farm), eggshell color is determined by what hens are fed. The particular breed of the chicken may have something to do with it as well.

There's no difference, nutritional or otherwise, between white and brown hen's eggs -- except that brown eggs tend to be more expensive. Some people believe that brown eggs are "organic" or healthier and thus are suckered into paying higher prices for the same henfruit.

your humble TubaDiva
Today a brown egg . . . tomorrow . . . who knows? We're living dangerously!

Of course. Haven't you ever heard of..........unbleached flour????

[Boris B]

Originally posted by DrMatrix:
The question assumes that you can tell a chicken from a non-chicken.... I don't think you have a definite line between the chickens and the proto-chickens. The whole idea of classification was created by man.

There is no answer because you cannot distinguish chicken from non-chicken.

You're right that there is no definite line between chicken and proto-chicken, but I don't know why this is relevant. There are any number of defensible places to draw the line; wherever you draw the line, a chicken will hatch from an egg produced by a proto-chicken. I say that egg is the first chicken egg, but that is just my definition. So the egg came first.

The point is, wherever you draw the line, the egg came first, as long as you define egg by what hatches from it, not by what produced it.

Of course, if you intepret the question to mean, which came first, the chicken or the egg of any species, the egg obviously came first.

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Hopefully, I can convince you to accept "hopefully" as a disjunct adverb.
Frankly, I would be lying if I said I were confident.
Perhaps this subject is simply too complex for me to explain.
Unfortunately, I would be lucky to explain my way out of a paper bag.

[HeeHaw]

I don't understand why this question is considered profound. The answer is very simple, IMHO:

If you believe in Creationism, the chicken came first, as God created it when he created all other non-human, land-based animals (on the 5th day, if memory serves).

If you believe in Evolutionism, the Egg came first as a logical progression from quasi-science's oft-quoted "life-creating primordial ooze" to the egg from a non-Chicken that hatched the first Chicken.

Can anyone poke holes in this theory?

[The Second Stone]

Originally Posted by ;261567

Reminds me of a joke:

A chicken and an egg are relaxing after sex. The egg is smoking a cigarette and says with a pissed off look, "Well, I guess we know the answer to that question!"



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whammy.

Chicken came first. Egg is just lucky to get laid by the chicken.

[orcenio]

Reanimated neo-dinosaurs laid those eggs.

[robert_columbia]

Originally Posted by orcenio

Reanimated neo-dinosaurs laid those eggs.

Zombie
Chickens
Caution

[lieu]

Were usernames not associated with each post back in '99 or did those from the first 11 posts to this thread just mistakenly get dropped in some subsequent upgrade? Strange that they're missing, each just registering "Guest".

[Colibri]

Originally Posted by lieu

Were usernames not associated with each post back in '99 or did those from the first 11 posts to this thread just mistakenly get dropped in some subsequent upgrade? Strange that they're missing, each just registering "Guest".

At some point the posts became disassociated with the profile of the poster who made them. I assume the default member status is "Guest."

Anyone responding should note that this thread originated in the Paleocyberic Era.

[Jamicat]

Is "chicken of the sea" live birth or hatchlings?

[SeaDragonTattoo]

I'm not sure, but they don't float.

[1iLeft]

Originally Posted by Colibri

Anyone responding should note that this thread originated in the Paleocyberic Era.

Impossible. There weren't any eggs back then - let alone teh Internetz. Unless perhaps... they migrated?

[guizot]

Originally Posted by Colibri

Anyone responding should note that this thread originated in the Paleocyberic Era.

Yes, that's when kids listened to real music, and ova were zygotes.

[CutterJohn]

A chicken was born from an egg.

This egg was laid by a 99.99999% chicken.

The 99.99999% chicken hatched from an egg laid by a 99.99998% chicken.

The 99.99998% chicken hatched from an egg laid by a 99.99997% chicken.

The 99.99997% chicken hatched from an egg laid by a 99.99996% chicken.

The 99.99996% chicken hatched from an egg laid by a 99.99995% chicken.

The 99.99995% chicken hatched from an egg laid by a 99.99994% chicken.

Etc, etc, going back a few billion years to something thats 0.0000001% chicken.

The only reason its difficult to grasp is the idea that species are some set, concrete definition.