The expression “Its a chicken-egg thing” is silly. Of course the egg came before the chicken!!! We define a species according to the ability of individuals of that specied to reproduce and produce fertile offspring with others of the same species. Clearly, there must have been a first chicken, per this definition: i.e. the first animal in a long process of evolution that could have sucessfully mated with our current population of chickens. WHATEVER chicken this “first” chicken was, must have been in an egg before it was born. So clearly the egg came before the chicken. It is so clear. Do you agree?
I propose we find another expression to replace “its a chicken-egg thing” that more accurately relects what this expression intends to express.
This topic was settled once and for all by noted independent newspaper columnist and World’s Smartest Human Cecil Adams.
Is there a question here?
Eggs for breakfast, chicken for supper. Breakfast in the morning, supper in the evening. Egg first.
Okay, Cecil seems to be reading this differently than I do. I’ve always thought of it as the chicken or the chicken-egg. I mean, duh, sure there were eggs before there was Poltrius chickenus. Just like there were other species that had sperm, ova, eyes, teeth, brains, etc. before human beings existed.
But was there human sperm before there were humans? If not, were did the first person come from? And if so, what’s some non-human doing ejaculating human sperm? And what’s his non-human girlfriend doing with compatible ova?
Hmmm… that’s pretty screwy. I guess the Judeo-Christian God did create all living beings in 2 or 3 days, after all. Huh.
:ducking and running to GD:
[sub]Gallus gallus; I know.[/sub]
Clearly, the first chicken would not have hatched from a chicken egg. Whatever genetic change that caused the animal inside the egg to be a chicken instead of whatever the animal that laid it was would not have changed the nature of the egg. If you had been present there, you would have seen a chicken hatching out of the egg of a chicken ancestor.