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Asked by Tonijohnson to Sian, Max, Lizzie, Francis, Ben on 3 Mar 2018. This question was also asked by Aherrera11, 468munm48.
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Lizzie Wright answered on 3 Mar 2018:
That’s a tough one to ask us! I’m going to go with the egg. There must be an egg before a chicken can hatch and so the parents were likely not-quite chickens and they created the first chicken through a combination of their genes. Let’s see what everyone else says!
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Sian Richardson answered on 3 Mar 2018:
I would agree with Elizabeth that the egg probably came first. But to argue the other side for the chicken – some animals go through a metamorphosis phase of development (eg caterpillars to butterflies). Birds have a similar thing going from an egg, chick, then adult. Maybe the egg and fluffy yellow chick were the same as its predecessors (not-quite chickens) but during its transition to adult-hood it became what we know as a chicken. Therefore the chicken would have come first then the egg?
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anon answered on 3 Mar 2018:
The question that defies us all! I would say that an ancestor of chickens laid an egg and from mutations and evolution over time this created the chicken. The chicken then grew and laid its own egg which led to more chickens and so on…So even though the chicken must have hatched from an egg in the first place, it was’t quite a chicken egg. You could say that the chicken came first! I could be wrong though!
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Max Jamilly answered on 3 Mar 2018:
Great question! I agree with everyone else – I think that eggs existed before chickens did. Evolution tells us that chickens’ ancestors were toothed dinosaurs and, more recently, wild jungle birds which humans began to keep as pets and for food. These ancestors hatched from eggs as well, even though they weren’t technically chicken eggs because chickens didn’t exist. So the egg came before the chicken.
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Francis Man answered on 4 Mar 2018:
In my opinion it’s the egg first, although the first eggs were certainly very different from chicken eggs. Living species evolve constantly so at what point exactly did the chicken appear? I’d say the point where you have the biggest chance of an interesting mix happening is when the egg gets fertilised…
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Ben Mulhearn answered on 5 Mar 2018:
I agree with everyone else that this is a great question!
It also depends on what your definition of an ‘egg’ is. Most people might think from this question that the egg is the hard-shelled version with an egg white and egg yolk, but if you take it right back to the beginning of its formation then an egg is a single cell which contains half of all the geneti. information needed before a new life can start, with the other half coming from the sperm.
As eggs (single cells with half the information needed for life) must be made from an organism like a chicken (or it’s anscestor) I would say the chicken (or it’s anscestor) must have come first!
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