Thread: Chicken or Egg- Which Came First?

Wow. I find it kind of comical that such a simple question like this can cause such heated discussions.

Originally Posted by ElsiaStar

Wow. I find it kind of comical that such a simple question like this can cause such heated discussions.

I prefer my eggs scrambled and chicken baked. My favorite between the two would have to be scrambled eggs.

Originally Posted by Xei

Well that's the most retarded thing I've ever read.

Only chickens have the protein nowadays therefore only chickens had the protein ever? That's logic? Really?

What? I'm reading the question as what came first: the chicken egg or the chicken itself. If you want to factor in things like dinosaurs, well then derp the egg came first.

Nnnnnoooooo...

The point is that there's no reason to think that the chicken's ancestors lacked the egg protein. The article says that only chickens have the protein today, but that's totally irrelevant because we're talking about evolution here and the ancestor of the chicken isn't alive today. Derp.

Saying the chicken came first essentially means that the gene that changed non-chicken to chicken was related to egg-creation, which firstly is unlikely, and secondly is totally academic and in fact meaningless because in reality there is no single point at which a species changes. As separate species are defined by their inability to produce fertile offspring, if there were a single cut off point, the first chicken would have nothing to mate with except itself. And as any good biologist could tell you, that doesn't work.

Originally Posted by Xei

Nnnnnoooooo...

The point is that there's no reason to think that the chicken's ancestors lacked the egg protein. The article says that only chickens have the protein today, but that's totally irrelevant because we're talking about evolution here and the ancestor of the chicken isn't alive today. Derp.

Saying the chicken came first essentially means that the gene that changed non-chicken to chicken was related to egg-creation, which firstly is unlikely, and secondly is totally academic and in fact meaningless because in reality there is no single point at which a species changes. As separate species are defined by their inability to produce fertile offspring, if there were a single cut off point, the first chicken would have nothing to mate with except itself. And as any good biologist could tell you, that doesn't work.

Wait, you are telling me masturbation doesn't work?

...I think your primary goal in masturbating might be significantly different from that of the rest of us.

I'm still hoping for that half-man half-hand mutant baby.

Originally Posted by Xei

Nnnnnoooooo...

The point is that there's no reason to think that the chicken's ancestors lacked the egg protein. The article says that only chickens have the protein today, but that's totally irrelevant because we're talking about evolution here and the ancestor of the chicken isn't alive today. Derp.

Saying the chicken came first essentially means that the gene that changed non-chicken to chicken was related to egg-creation, which firstly is unlikely, and secondly is totally academic and in fact meaningless because in reality there is no single point at which a species changes. As separate species are defined by their inability to produce fertile offspring, if there were a single cut off point, the first chicken would have nothing to mate with except itself. And as any good biologist could tell you, that doesn't work.

Here is a question: how much evolution must a species go through before it is considered an entirely different species? If you have a chicken's ancestor that is essentially the same thing as a modern day chicken...which is to say, you look at it and conclude it is a chicken, then I think the study is valid. Surely every chicken on the planet today is not of the same exact breed. There is variation. You have chickens that lay white eggs and chickens that lay brown eggs. "Chicken" is a loose term. What we have here is a member of the chicken family developing a mutation that gives rise to hard, crunchy egg shells. It may not be the exact subspecies and breed of modern day chickens, but it is close enough to be called a chicken itself.

But if you want to be extremely technical and define chickens only as the precise subspecies seen on farms today, developed over thousands of years of genetic selection, then the egg came first..thanks to the genetic mutation of the almost-chicken ancestor.

Come on folks, the answer is neither.

Originally Posted by Mario92

Here is a question: how much evolution must a species go through before it is considered an entirely different species? If you have a chicken's ancestor that is essentially the same thing as a modern day chicken...which is to say, you look at it and conclude it is a chicken, then I think the study is valid. Surely every chicken on the planet today is not of the same exact breed. There is variation. You have chickens that lay white eggs and chickens that lay brown eggs. "Chicken" is a loose term. What we have here is a member of the chicken family developing a mutation that gives rise to hard, crunchy egg shells. It may not be the exact subspecies and breed of modern day chickens, but it is close enough to be called a chicken itself.

But if you want to be extremely technical and define chickens only as the precise subspecies seen on farms today, developed over thousands of years of genetic selection, then the egg came first..thanks to the genetic mutation of the almost-chicken ancestor.

I'm not sure why you're talking about this; species, like other scientific terms, is well defined, and I actually discussed the strict definition in my post:

separate species are defined by their inability to produce fertile offspring

You can't treat the issue of gradual transition as a technicality because it's crucial to answering the question. The question is about a specific animal which was first, and any way you look at it the parent of that first chicken, by definition, is going to look very like a chicken.

Originally Posted by Xei

I'm not sure why you're talking about this; species, like other scientific terms, is well defined, and I actually discussed the strict definition in my post:

You can't treat the issue of gradual transition as a technicality because it's crucial to answering the question. The question is about a specific animal which was first, and any way you look at it the parent of that first chicken, by definition, is going to look very like a chicken.

Perhaps I ought to be more clear: define chicken. What constitutes a chicken? If the modern chicken's ancestor developed the crunchy chicken shell, but that ancestor is similar enough to have viable offspring with a modern chicken, does that count?

Chicken; Gallus gallus domesticus.

If it naturally has viable offspring with a modern chicken then it's a modern chicken.

wow i wounder how much funding went into this problem

Originally Posted by Xei

Chicken; Gallus gallus domesticus.

If it naturally has viable offspring with a modern chicken then it's a modern chicken.

So if the chicken being discussed in the study is (or rather, would be) capable of producing viable offspring with modern chickens, would the study thus be valid?

I'm sorry but this conversation seems a little nonsensical.

Of course the chickens in the study can have viable offspring with modern chickens; they are modern chickens.

And either way is totally irrelevant to why the 'findings' of the study are completely wrong.

Originally Posted by Xei

And either way is totally irrelevant to why the 'findings' of the study are completely wrong.

I'm sorry, but...why are they wrong?

Originally Posted by Xei

And either way is totally irrelevant to why the 'findings' of the study are completely wrong.

I'm sorry, but...why are they wrong?

See post #30 for what I thought this discussion was about...

Originally Posted by Mario92

Actually, the chicken came first. Research has found that the modern-day chicken egg is the product of a genetic mutation from the first chicken. The shell requires a specific protein that was absent until the first chicken as we know it today evolved.

The Chicken Came First « Revelations From An Unwashed Brain

AGREED *high 5*

I should point out that if you think the article was talking about the first chicken it's just a case of not reading the article properly.

Firstly there's no such thing as the first chicken; second I don't know how or why they would sequence its genome.

They're talking about chickens today. That this is such a patently an incorrect approach might have caused some confusion.

Egg, obviously, as a Chicken's egg would have had to have been born to the ancestor first.

well if the egg came first what kept it warm?

Originally Posted by Xei

Firstly there's no such thing as the first chicken; second I don't know how or why they would sequence its genome.

No first chicken? I mean, I grant that species are in a constant state of evolution, but there had to be something that you could look at and call a chicken. And genome sequencing is actually fairly standard. The why is a bit more mysterious, but you gotta figure that government grant money is going into some fun stuff.

They're talking about chickens today. That this is such a patently an incorrect approach might have caused some confusion.

Chickens of today, chicken ancestors...close enough.

We can equate chickens and chicken ancestors in a discussion about the difference between chickens and their ancestors? The study says that chickens came first because modern chickens have a protein specific to eggs. The argument is completely wrong because it discards the very likely possibility that pre-chickens also had this protein.

No, there wasn't a first chicken. The whole point of evolution is that it is gradual. There have been plenty of things that you can look at and call a chicken, but with all of those, its parents would have looked just as much like a chicken. If there were a first chicken by strict definition, as I explained, it wouldn't have had anything to mate with. So it's a contradiction. And you can't just handwave and say 'well the chicken emerged around about here' because the whole point of the question is that it refers to a single event.