Chicken comes before the Egg

[rov1200]

Now that scientists have proved that the chicken arrived before the egg what does this tell us about evolution?

[Greedyfly]

We will never know the answer to every question!

[12thPaladin]

Nice try rov1200.
I'm not biting.

[McMouse]

It tells us why chickens roll over and go to sleep and eggs just lay there.

[jno]

so do they say where the chicken came from?

[bibblebub]

it show that the service in MacDonald's hasn't improved

[rojash]

I think you'll find that the chuck came before the fickens

[12thPaladin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEz1s0F3g-M

[jake-the-peg]

Er no they haven't

This is a particularly bad instance of Journalists badmly reporting a science story - aided and abetted by one of the scientists who just couldn't resist the temptation of a snappy sound-bite and appearance in the national press with a "silly season" story.

I really can't do better than this comment

http://scienceblogs.c..._this_is_no_way_t.php

[jno]

interesting, thanks, jake

[chakka35]

That the chicken came before the egg is easily shown by pure logic:

At some stage in the evolutionary process a pre-chicken, due to a succesion of random mutations, gave rise to a strain which could not mate with the parent strain - a new species, a chicken. A pre-chicken would have laid an egg (a pre-chicken's egg, note) containing that last mutation which completed the separation, - an egg which produced a chicken. That chicken then laid the first chicken's egg. So the sequence is:

Pre-chicken - pre-chicken's egg - chicken - chicken's egg. QED.

[mollykins]

And where is the link to the evidence rov?

[squarebear]

What evidence Molly?

[jake-the-peg]

I see chakka

But it's not "What came first the chicken or the pre-chicken's egg" is it?

Besides which the question is not a literal one but a question about cause and effect and prime-movers.

To answer it literally is always to miss the point

[chakka35]

Yes, jake, but the original question obviously meant it literally, purely as a riddle. Given that chickens produce eggs which produce more chickens, which came first?
The logic shows that the chicken came before the chicken's egg.

And there was an extraordinarily literal answer from Victor Serebriakoff late prominent member of Mensa, who once said that the egg obviously came first because there were species producing eggs before the chicken arrived!

I had to explain gently to him that the question is "Which came first, the chicken or a chicken's egg?" not "Which came first, the chicken or any old egg?" otherwise there is no riddle.

[squarebear]

But the riddle is "what came first, the chicken or the egg". The egg ceratinly did.

[Old_Geezer]

What is this thread ? A troll attempt ?

Egg has to come first because many creatures lay eggs: so before the animal that we now know as a chicken evolved to qualify as a chicken, it's predecessor/parent must have already been laying eggs. Egg laying being rather fundamental to the species.

[jno]

yes... the thing is, chicken has changed its name over the years (from pre-chicken to chicken) while egg is still egg. So the answer is more to do with words than with biology. If you defined chicken as 'something that comes out of an egg' (which of course is far too wide to be much use in real life), the answer would be much trickier.

[chakka35]

Look, folks , you're making too much of this riddle (and Old Geezer is making the same mistake as Victor Serebriakoff did). The riddle wasn't concerned with anything as complicated as previous egg-layers - that they existed is so obvious that the riddle would have been pointless - but to chickens and chicken's eggs. Since they seem to exist in an endless continuum, which came first?

My explanation (thogh sound) is one of those cases where one deals with a joke in a spirit of tongue-in-cheek mock-seriousness.

[chelle7272]

//I think you'll find that the chuck came before the fickens //

I was going to say that :-)

[Old_Geezer]

It is a pointless riddle.

As for restricting it to chicken's eggs only, that depends on whether you call a chicken egg one that a chicken laid, or one that a chicken hatched from. Since it depends only on defintiions, it too, like duck's bill, is fairly pointless.