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

    Asked by anon-241786 to Ross, Natalia, Martin, Gabriela, Ellie, Chukwuka on 13 Mar 2020. This question was also asked by anon-241771.
    • Photo: Martin Johnsson

      Martin Johnsson answered on 13 Mar 2020:

      As a chicken geneticists who has worked with evolution, this is actually my favourite question. 🙂

      The egg came first.

      If we take an evolutionary view, we can look at relatives of the chickens (other birds, for example), and notice that they too lay eggs. This means that eggs came before the chicken as a species. That means that the first bird that we would recognize as a chicken must have hatched out of an egg.

    • Photo: Eleanor Spence

      Eleanor Spence answered on 13 Mar 2020:

      Great question!

Comments