Embrace your inner nerd: which one comes first, chicken or egg?

vesicles

Colonel
My take on it.

With regards to strictly chicken, chicken and egg came together. Egg is part of chicken. In order for the egg to become chicken, it has to be fertilized, which means you need a rooster. Where did the rooster come from with the egg? Without a mature rooster, egg is useless. Thus, chicken and egg must have evolved together.

Let's then move back a step. Birds evolved from dinosaurs. then the same question stays, which came first, dinosaur or egg? If we keep going back, we get to the stage of single cell organisms, which are the ancestors of all life forms on Earth. As I have mentioned before, egg is a giant single cell. So in a way (very loosely though), the ancient single cell organisms are eggs (very loosely defined). So egg came first.

However, with chicken and egg strictly, chicken and egg came together. egg without the chicken is useless and chicken without eggs is equally useless. they must evolve together.
 

Shaolian

Junior Member
Registered Member
Guys, it's neither egg nor chicken, or single cells. No, the laws of physics came first before everything in this universe. It's the laws of physics that permitted the formation of every molecule, atom, string and what not, that permitted the formation of stars, nebulae, that formed our solar system, that created the Earth. So on and so forth…
 

broadsword

Brigadier
Scientists theorized that life on Earth began with showers of asteroid, meteorites and other dust particles from space. When they replicated that condition in the lab, organisms came to life, not eggs. That is why you have KFC, not KFE.
 

SinoSoldier

Colonel
Nothing came "first"; both were products of evolution and evolved such that they would adapt to the workings of each other. Additionally, egg-laying organisms have been around for far longer than the chicken.
 

vesicles

Colonel
One day, egg yolk met egg white and they fell in love with each other and decided to move in with each other. They found a little house on the prairie called shell. That's how you get an egg...
 

vesicles

Colonel
Scientists theorized that life on Earth began with showers of asteroid, meteorites and other dust particles from space. When they replicated that condition in the lab, organisms came to life, not eggs. That is why you have KFC, not KFE.

Not that far. They put some simple molecules, like CO2, H2O, etc, in a flask and applied pressure and high temperatures and UV light. Some simple organic molecules formed in the flask. That's it. Nothing alive came out...

People are indeed attempting to test more complex forms of the same process. Putting DNA and simple proteins in synthetic liposomes (mimicking cell membranes). Not sure how it went...
 

solarz

Brigadier
Well, you have to be more specific. Are you referring to only chicken eggs or any kind of egg? If it's the latter, then obviously dinosaur eggs came before chickens.

Now if it's specifically chicken eggs, then that depends on how you define a chicken egg: is any egg laid by a chicken considered a chicken egg, or is it any egg that hatches a chicken? If it's the latter, or even both, then the chicken egg came first. If it's only the former, then the chicken came first.
 

dingyibvs

Junior Member
Depends on how you define chicken and egg. If egg is defined as an embryo produced by a chicken then the chicken came first. If the chicken is defined as an animal that hatched from an egg, then the egg came first. In other words, is the egg defined by being laid by a chicken, or is chicken defined by hatching from an egg?
 
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