• Question: what came first the chicken or the egg and why do you think this?

    Asked by sonalm to Bob, Katie, Nisha, Sallie, Vee on 2 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: Bob Bonwick

      Bob Bonwick answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      I think neither… I would imagine that there would have been an evolutionary process where the early chickens would have been born in a way closer to the way other animals gestate and then in a fit of progress that creature would have laid and egg. So in actuality, the first egg wouldn’t have come from a chicken at all. More of an animal close to a chicken, but not as we know it.

    • Photo: Sallie Baxendale

      Sallie Baxendale answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      That’s a really tough one – like Bob says it’s likley that neither came first but that eggs as a way of reproducing evolved through some other creature -Using eggs as a means of reproducing was well established at the time of the dinosaurs and palentologists have found lots of fossilised dinosaur eggs in our country on the Dorset coast. Some people think that birds evolved from the dinosaurs (have you seen Jurassic Park? they talk about this in that film) so maybe the real question should be what came first the dinosaur or the egg?

    • Photo: Vee Mitchell

      Vee Mitchell answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      Oh the nights spent in the pub arguing this one out as a student and nobody could ever agree. I tend to fall on the side of the egg came first – that neither Mum and Dad looked like chickens but maybe something close to it.

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