• Question: What came first the chicken or the egg

    Asked by 959tund47 to Aimee, Gemma, Hussain, Robert, Ross on 13 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by Botha.
    • Photo: Hussain Jaffery

      Hussain Jaffery answered on 13 Nov 2015:

      The answer to this age-old question is: both and neither cam first.

      Allow me to explain. Evolution is a process of organisms gradually having their characteristic changed and selected over many generations. The chicken evolved from something that looked a little different and had eggs that looked a little different. You can trace back the evolution of chickens using DNA sequences and see that it took chickens 3.8 billions long years to look the way they do today and have the eggs that they do.

      For example, there wasn’t just one point in time where the ‘egg’ suddenly showed up. Instead there were probably many thousands or millions of years where the offspring slowly became more egg-like. Chicken and all birds actually are descended from dinosaurs.

      Nothing in the universe came first, everything just changes form. I the case of chickens and evolution, it took a long time and many, many, gradual changes.

    • Photo: Aimee Goodall

      Aimee Goodall answered on 16 Nov 2015:

      I love this question, but as Hussain said neither came first.

      I do have a question for you though,
      Why did the chicken cross the road? 😛

Comments