What came first, the Chicken or the Egg?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

I’d like to start by saying, before actually having read the article at the link below, I had come to exactly the same conclusion, so I’m not disputing this answer.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/479/which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg

However…

If you really take the intent of the question to mind, I’m not so sure the second answer is as “retarded” as is purported.

The question “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” is intended to be a paradox, and one can deduce that the question is in fact worded improperly for our contemporary times and instead should be worded “What came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?”.

If worded like this, the paradox still exists. The answer then depends on whether the type of egg is determined by what animal laid the egg, or what animal hatches out of the egg.

Let’s say that the chicken’s direct ancestor (for the sake of argument, we’ll say it was a dodo) reproduces by way of laying an egg, but through the miracle of evolution, a mutation causes the offspring occupant of that egg to be a chicken instead of a dodo. Was that egg that hatched a dodo egg, because it was laid by a dodo, or was it a chicken egg because it’s occupant was a chicken?

This question is at the heart of the dilemma. If a dodo lays a dodo egg that happens to hatch a mutant which is a new species called chicken, well then the chicken came first, and the chicken egg doesn’t come along until that chicken lays an egg. Conversely, if a dodo lays a chicken egg, well then clearly the chicken egg comes before the chicken (unless you get into the business of when the egg shell actually forms around the fetal chicken, and at what point the fetus is considered a chicken).
I’m sure this has been a waste of time to anyone who bothered to read it, but I just needed to add my piece (which in all likelihood isn’t even an original argument, although it’s at least original to me), especially because the answer given by Cecil (while correct) was based on the literal interpretation of the question and not the intent.

2

This is the same answer I usually give.

Paradoxer: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Me: The egg of course

Paradoxer: Well, then, who laid that egg?

Me: Proto-chicken.

3

Actually, beta-chicken, release candidate 0.99b07rc3. The alpha release looked suspiciously like a duck.

4

[Groucho]Why a duck?[/Chico]

5

Actually, that is a good look at where the ambiguity still exists.

My answer usually involves a dissertation on how we define a chicken and where we draw the line between a chicken and the chicken’s immediate anscestor that was not a chicken, but some other very chicken-like bird. I.e. protochicken.

But I’ll try to remember the “define whether a chicken egg is layed by a chicken or hatches a chicken” method.

6

Seems like a chicken egg would require intervention on someone/something’s behalf to provide at least some incubation (even the desert gets cold at night) or guardianship of some sort since eggs are sitting ducks.

7

In nature*, that incubation is provided by the mother chicken (hen). It’s only commercial farms that separate eggs from hens quickly to induce more egg laying that need incubators.

Guardianship is provided by hens and roosters.

*Not that there are many chickens outside of farms.

8

Right. The question becomes purely semantic, given evolution. It’s illustrative only regarding the semantics involved in classification, rather than its original ontological connotation.

9

The problem is, that’s not how evolution works. (Which is why evolution is not a miracle.)

If the first chicken actually were born that way, it would also be the last chicken. By definition animals of different species can’t interbreed, so who could it breed with?

One species does not develop into another species in a single monstrous mutation. Mutations accumulate over generations, populations migrate or for some other reason stop breeding with each other, and eventually there are two non-interbreeding populations, and we call them different species. This takes at minimum hundreds of generations, and usually a lot more than that.

You might get a better question if imagine a case of catastrophic geological separation—e.g., a flock of dodos falls down a hill and can never rejoin the rest of the dodos, and eventually that flock develops into chickens. But then you’re still stuck with an arbitrary dividing line. You could say that as soon as they fell down the hill, they became a different species (since they were no longer able to interbreed), in which case the chicken came first. But then you’re talking about a “chicken” that’s genetically and phenotypically identical to a dodo, so it’s not a very interesting point.

10

I assumed JHuff was looking at the distinction of how the egg is labeled, rather than the details of the evolutionary process.

From the evolutionary process, his description is more or less right if you look at a micro level rather than a macro level.

There was a population of birds that were very chickenlike except for one undefined trait that is sufficient for us to determine they were not chickens. Then one of these protochickens had a mutation that made it a chicken. That mutation would have showed up in the egg. Said mutated protochicken (i.e. chicken) banged another protochicken and the mutation carried through, ergo chickens began to proliferate.

The thing is, that first chicken might have been significantly different from chickens today, through genetic drift, etc. What exactly is a chicken, vs some other ground bird? Our common conception of “chicken” expects us to draw a much cleaner line than evolution does.

11

I would argue that an egg must be defined in terms of what laid it, rather than what it hatches into, since many eggs never hatch at all. If an egg is defined by what it hatches into, then one could never say that the culinary eggs one buys at the grocery store were chicken eggs.

12

The Rooster. Duh. Cecil has a baseless optimism regarding the Rooster’s prowess as a lover, not realizing that it is just another male, grabbing his selfish pleasure before running off to crow about it before mating with another hen.

13

Chronos, the egg has DNA, and thus could be defined by what its makeup is, regardless of whether it is fertilized or ever hatches. Loosely speaking this could be what JHuff was intending.

14

My own theory is that the chicken most assuredly came first and that the egg was a very sensible adaptation to preserve the species when they elected to start crossing roads. As we all know, chickens were around long before we invented roads to drive our cars on.

A chicken’s mental equipment is generally deficient and it’s eyesight rather dim (to quote Jake Thachray even if he was talking about a gorilla) and evolution in its wisdom provided a means of preserving the offspring in the event of mummy meeting a tyre that it couldn’t see before it worked out that the encounter might be disadvantageous. There was never an issue concerning keeping the eggs warm…not in my grandfather’s hatchery anyway.

15

Mine is the first 100% chicken was hatched from a 99.9% chicken egg.