FYI: Which Came First, The Chicken Or The Egg?Chickens as a species became chickens through a long slow process of evolution. At some point a chicken-like bird produced an offspring that due to some mutation in its DNA crossed the threshold from mere chicken likeness into chicken actuality. That is to say a proto-chicken gave birth to a real-life official chicken. And since that real-life official chicken came out of its own egg we can say that the egg came first.Another way to look at the question would be to ask which came first in evolutionary history. Once again the egg takes precedence. Many characteristics of the modern avian egg namely an oblong asymmetrical shape and a hardened shell were in place before birds diverged from dinosaurs about 150 million years ago. A lot of the traits that we see in bird eggs evolved prior to birds in theropod dinosaurs says Darla Zelenitsky of the University of Calgary. Another key moment in the history of avian eggs occurred at least 150 million years before that when a subset of four-limbed vertebrates evolved to produce amniotic eggs. The embryos within the eggs were surrounded by three fluid-filled membranes that provide nourishment protection and a way to breathe. The earliest amniotic eggs contained large amounts of yolk says James R. Stewart a reproductive physiologist at East Tennessee State University. You still see that in birds crocodilians and snakes he explains. Like other placental mammals we humans lost our yolk somewhere along the line but our eggs still come with a vestigial yolk sac.Have a burning science question you'd like to see answered in our FYI section? Email it to fyi@popsci.com.umm well then...shall I press on and ask Which came first the dinosaur or the egg? Lets see if you can answer that.The genetic mechanism is the same for all life.Sovereign individuals not governmentsBut before it was hatched that egg was a probabilistic uncertainty. So before hatching probability would tell you that egg hosts that protochicken and not the modern version. Yes there us a chance of a mutation into a chicken but there is also a chance it mutates unto a dinosaur.  Small but there.The probability function only collapses once the chicken is out of the egg.The question that concerns me more is where did the first chicken find its rooster?Chickens as a species became chickens through a long slow process of evolution. At some point a chicken-like bird produced an offspring that due to some mutation in its DNA crossed the threshold from mere chicken likeness into chicken actuality.Sounds more like part of creed than a scientific argument. 'And the bird made chicken walked among the avians who knew it not' is a much more poetic way of saying the same darn thing. You know unless evolution took a rib next that first chicken would have had to reproduce with something other than a chicken. It all stays on the same branch unless that chicken finds a way to make two chickens. Another way to look at it... would be that God created the chicken first. Oh but that's not as scientific as saying a long time ago in a primordial pool far far away... Its cute but I would much rather hear about the science. I remember reading something about OC-17 being produced by the chicken to help form the egg shell. That is a far more interesting conversation than corpus gallinaceo.What came first POPSCI the website or the writers for POPSCI lol.Oh and for as the chicken and egg question Life came first and multiplied.But what IS a chicken?
Since all life is constantly in a state of becoming or changing then all chickens are distinct individuals and cannot be grouped for the purpose of this question.
Each chicken from the first to the last is an individual.
So we see that a chicken came from an egg in each instance.
Therefore an egg always comes before a chickenI watched a youtube video of Chris Langan answering this quesion the same wayKillerT - I think youre wrong. The chicken one way or another can be grouped within a spectrum of dna. So even if one chicken species varies from another there is a point in their evolution that we can say this is now a chicken. And that change would have -most likely- occurred in the embryo. Its like saying a tree falling in the forest doesnt make a sound because a sound should be defined as a sound wave being observed which is just arguing semantics. Now it is possible that the egg wasnt genetically changed as an embryo to make it the chicken and that a pre-chicken bird was genetically changed enviromentally to the point where it entered that spectrum of chicken dna. IE: maybe it was really close to a chicken but had 2x more feathers and of a different color and 3 feet but enviromental changes caused the chicken to mutate as such to become within the spectrum of chicken dna.NoOneYouKnow Why do you say the chicken has to reproduce with something other than a chicken?
Why couldn't it have siblings cousins parents etc that it could mate with?
All that is needed is for the more chicken like birds to out-breed the rest over generations and presto you have a new species.
The truth is all of the above contributed to the chicken. Domesticated birds were interbred with wild birds to create a new species called chicken.So God did not create chickens. People and horny birds did.Goo came first then life came from goo and then for what ever other reason can replication of same said life else you have just orginal new life again in wide varieties then dies which seems rather pointless.Goo makes Life.Life: Hello I'm alive! die the end. PointlessLife with replication:  Hello I'm alive and I made a mini me. Say hello mini me. Hello... Point-able!buell If I applied that argument to people it would mean that an embryo is a person and therefore abortion is murder.
Sorry but an embryo is not a chicken. So the egg still comes first.lol Just imagine if all life was created they must all have been alive on earth at the same time and have been dying off rapidly ever since. What a mess good thing the Earth's climate will only support a fraction of them at any given time so they died off and made room for us.@KillerT Why do you say the chicken has to reproduce with something other than a chicken?*Breath*Because the FIRST chicken would be the ONLY chicken in existence until you had a SECOND chicken. Which means it either has to wait for evolution to create another gallinaceo of the opposite sex or it has to reproduce with something else. Now chances are this chicken is either too horny or too short lived to wait for another chicken to evolve so its going to have to settle with a member of another already existing species. This is an unavoidable roadblock for evolution this new bird's genetic material is merely added to that of an existing species where evolution requires it branches off on it's own. The species might get a new perk (assuming the mutation is not sterile) but it remains the same species.If a chicken-like species reproduced over millions of years and became chicken proper that still wouldn't be evolution. You started with one species and ended with one species - the same species as a matter of fact. Evolution would require a split resulting in an additional species like the supposed relationship between chimps and humans. Chimps are still chimps but a long time ago one chimp broke off and became a new species(well that's the creed anyway).Further more if reproduction had anything to do with it then more rapidly reproducing species like rabbits should have outpaces us long ago and even now should see more genetic variation. Yet despite significantly greater pressure to survive they don't. Rabbits as far as we can tell have always been rabbits. Some species such as beavers we know for a fact have not changed for millions of years. This has never been observed or replicated yet it is accepted by the scientific community purely out of the preconceived notion that evolution is already proven.The Borg will multiply. Assimilation is logical natural evolution. You will be assimilated! ~ Borg.Which came first the human or the Borg? Hmmm?Chickens lay chicken eggs.  Fish lay fish eggs (if you can call it laying) so wouldn't neanderchickens lay neanderchicken eggs?This is the problem with evolution (or the problem with our way of dividing species).  At some point neanderchicken will have to lay a chicken egg or a a chicken will have to hatch from a neanderchicken egg.  Both seem kinda funky.And as was pointed out above by someone I don't know once the first chicken hatched it would have to mate with a neanderchicken which wouldn't result in a new species just a neanderchicken with chicken traits.  Anyway my point is that the chicken would have to come first since the egg whence it hatches wouldn't be a chicken egg by virtue of not being laid by a chicken.@NoOneYouKnow
You seem to be ignoring that we DO know what species chickens come from because we can check their DNA and we can do the same for any creature.
They came from other chicken like species and those older species are still here along side the new chickens.
So evolution has been observed in many cases.
Keep in mind that chickens are only one example. There is nothing to stop a mutation resulting in twin unicorns for example who are able to mate with each other and instantly start a new species.
Its far fetched but DNA makes it possible.
As for variation's why jump to rabbits? I doubt you could even tell the difference between chickens and their similar non-closely unrelated cousins.Betting on DNA to NOT evolve is worse than your odds of winning the lottery. You just cant win.I think we are missing a very important evolutionary question here. How do you explain the natural selection path that leads multicellular organisms to create compacted miniaturised versions of themselves like eggs and baby offsprings?I think those bigoted creationists have got it all wrong  harping about the evolution of the eye (which Darwin himself had pondered.) They would be better off in serving their intelligent design cause by pointing out the  difficulty of explaining how to achieve complete functional spores and foetuses through the hit and miss processes of natural selection.Betting on DNA to NOT evolve is worse than your odds of winning the lottery. You just cant win.This was the dogma NoOneYouKnow was talking about. You believe in something so completely that you'll ridicule other people for not believing the same thing even though no one has observed this thing you believe in.  Here's the logic: We see different types of animals. Based on what we know the only way these could have come about is through evolution.It is no different from We see different types of animals. Based on what we know the only way these could have come about is by God creating them.If you ignore that environmental pressures don't make genetic mutations that almost all genetic mutations are very bad and that the body tries VERY hard to suppress mutations (because they are almost universally fatal) when an animal evolves from one species to another it has to be able to interbreed or it will die out which means its not another species.  When it all comes down to it a change has to be made that makes the animal not able to reproduce with the previous genetic set up.  This isn't inconceivable if the two populations are separated geologically but we just haven't seen this happen.Dogs are a great example. I don't know of any other type of animal that can have such a diverse set of traits within the same species.  The record low for a full grown chihuahua is 7 ounces (just over half a pound). It's not unusual for a mastiff to get into the 200 pound range. (Meaning the mastiff weighs more than 350 times as much as the chihuahua. To relate this to chickens it would be like having an 8 pound fryer and  1.4 ton roaster)  Still if you have a very large stool (or very deep ditch) the two dogs could interbreed even though they have been separated geologically for a long time and have been bred to be distinct.I'm not saying that evolution doesn't happen.  I find the theory very dubious and there is a strong state-sponsored misinformation campaign (called elementary school science class) which makes me even more wary but it isn't impossible that something similar to what we think of as evolution happens.  The fact is we won't know until we can use the scientific method (observe hypothesize test) to get to the apparent truth.Just watched a cool show on netflix about big cats. turns out lions and tigers two obviously distinct species on the outside are incredibly similar on the inside. In fact close enough to still breed with each other. Evolution doesn't tell us that a new species is born in a generation it's gradual. You wouldn't have a proto-chicken who lays an egg that'd be considered a chicken there'd be dozens or hundreds or thousands of generations of grey area where many families share similar traits until eventually one group ends up with stripes and another doesn't...I answered this questions YEARS ago using the same reasoning and far fewer words in the form of a very simple question:Well what did the first chicken come out of...?Haha - Neanderchicken!Given that we know less than 1% of what there is to be known the missing 99% will always be filtered through ones belief in a creator.All of our domestic cats we believe;  still have the genetic traits of the sabertooth and have seen in their evolution rise of the resurgent sabertooth.  That one in particular will always be studied for exploitation.  You'd think that if we created an environment that was designed to change growing in difficulty over like ten generations from adaptation to the new demands then demand more...we could be ranching sabers in less than 100 years.  Going from lion or tiger stock would be faster-maybe.  Inherent will to adapt vs dominance and satisfaction.  Gotta take their satisfaction away by convincing them there's something the cat needs to do but a lion for instance if male it only gets off it's butt if it thinks it needs to eat fight mate. or crap.  It's happy making the females hunt and kill but it leads to a relatively small male population which kills diversity by keeping a small number of traits active in the whole collective to be passed on.This question has a very simple answer: The Chicken.God did not create imperfect nor incomplete things living or otherwise. Genesis is clear that he created man and the beasts not embryos not individual cells and certainly not the primordial soup so fervently held to by evolution cultists lol.Let the flaming begin. :P I know it's coming but whatevs. Nobody likes the truth when it involves the bible.At some point a chicken-like bird produced an offspring that due to some mutation in its DNA crossed the threshold from mere chicken likeness into chicken actuality.Absolute nonsense. Every chicken and the egg that it lays are the same species. There is no dividing line at a single generation. Species is an arbitrary construct defining differences accumulated across thousands of generations. You can only identify two organisms as being a different species if they are separated by many generations.Long before there were chickens there were fish and reptile species that reproduced via eggs.  Thus the egg existed long before the chicken.It's odd to me how anyone denies biological evolution as a fact an obvious one at this point in time.Give humankind a hundred thousand years isolate groups over time and keep them isolated from each other eventually you have humans with different shades of skin different hair shapes different nostrils and lips stronger musculature some with higher intelligence potential different color eyes....eventually they'll be unable to interbreed or will produce sterile offspring when they do and will only be able to interbreed with their own types speciation I think it's called occurs when they can no longer produce fertile offspring.Same with any animal...Give them a million years and they'll likely diverge like chimps humans orangutans gorillas did millions of years ago.  Of course during the age of fossil fuel we have made great strides in re-mixing mankind's DNA among previously isolated groups.Dear DanielLet me see.God made chickens.  Put man in charge of chickens.  Now we raise them eat them and their eggs.Chicken came first.The Evolutionists say it is easier to believe the imaginary theory of a dead person which can't be proved but one must believe.Takes just as much faith to believe in the Theory of Evolution as it does to believe in the Theory of God Created Chickens.The Wizards of Smart continue to propagate such nonsense and dupes keep following it.No matter how you slice it there was something before the supposed event then where did the dinosaurs come from?  Where did the actual earth that they are standing on come from?  Where did the asteroid that flew across space come from?  Where did the bacteria or whatever that was on the asteroid come from?If Evolution was a true theory then the moon would be covered with its own life unique from Earth.  Saturn all the planets and stars would be colonies of goo that formed from nothing that just existed for trillions and trillions of years.Evolution is a religion.  If you believe in Evolution then there is no amount of facts or proof that will dissuade your belief.God Created Chickens is a religion.  If you believe in God Created Chickens then there is no amount of facts or proof that will dissuade your belief.So Evolutionist have created their own religion with their own Gods (Magic Goo Creators) with their own Profits (Al Gore) and their own Apocalypse (End of Time).  It's just a modern day religion.What there should be is a Separation of Stupid People but alas they aren't smart enough to get a job so they go to College and then to Masters and then to PhD and then to stupidity.So thank you for attempting half heartedly to answer an age old riddle.  Which came first God or a man who doesn't believe in God.RustyACE
Madison TNPS... Yes TN did host the Scopes Monkey Trial and we won the case but history has won the battle.http://tshirtgroove.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/i-think-i-did-chicken-or-egg-came-first-tshirt.jpg