• Question: what came first the chicken or the egg?

    Asked by Gina to Hazel, Ellen, Elliot, Rupesh, Thomas on 15 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by 375bsmf39.
    • Photo: Elliot Jokl

      Elliot Jokl answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      Great question!

      If you’ll excuse the pun, Biology has cracked this philosophy question: the egg.

      The reason is a little bit complicated, but it has to do with how we define what a chicken is. Animals are divided into different species. Two animals are considered to be of the same species if they can produce fertile offspring together. The more distantly related two animals are, the less likely that they will be able to make fertile offspring.

      So, the first “chicken” as we see it, would be the first chicken that was born that is closely related enough with our modern chickens to still make fertile offspring if they were to mate. The first chicken of this modern species would have come from an egg!

      However, this only really works as an answer if you treat modern species and older species as being completely different things, which isn’t quite true. Older species gradually evolved into newer species so it was a much more gradual process than one chicken producing an egg that was an entirely new species

    • Photo: Thomas Biggans

      Thomas Biggans answered on 16 Jun 2016:

      I also think the egg came first.

      Thinking about it I just think it makes sense that at some point animals that were similar to chickens but not quite a chicken produced an egg from which the first chicken was hatched. Thankfully my thought process agrees with biology and Elliot’s more in-depth reasoning.

    • Photo: Hazel Garvie-Cook

      Hazel Garvie-Cook answered on 16 Jun 2016:

      I’m with Elliot and Thomas on this one!

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