What Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?

[Morgan Marie]

This is one of the oldest questions I know of and for many years I asked the opinions of the people around me. Unfortunately, most of the people around me can philosophise as well as my shoe. So, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Was it the chicken that laid the egg or the egg that grew to be a chicken? Was it the egg that grew into a dinosaur or the dinosaur resembling a chicken that laid the egg? Or does a circle have no beginning?

[Morgan Marie]

I suppose the answer would be neither. Single-celled organisms came first didn't they?

[Adam J. M. Eagleton]

Eggs developed before the chicken evolved, I believe.

[Andrew]

well, the egg was in use long before chickens evolved into what we have now, so really, it would be the egg. How ever, if you want to be awkward you could go back and say that it was some kind of reptile, or a eukaryote cell, or if you are a real anus face, a bunch of elements that had yet to take form into any form of living thing.

Go star dust!

[The Hunt]

Eggs obviously existed before chickens.
A better question would be "What came first the chicken or the chicken egg?" because then we know we are not just talking about eggs in general.

I have an answer to suggest but I'll see what other people think first.

[Kal M!]

*chicken egg* is implied though.

[The Hunt]

From the previous posts this didn't appear to be the case.

[Kal M!]

Haha this is actually a discussion I started with my friends on facebook and I was surprised about how many people joined in on it and the type of answers I got. Then I said, "The chicken evolved from a fish and then laid an egg, so the chicken," and everyone seemed very satisfied with it hehe. But, no one can really no for sure I guess.

[Carly (a witty fool) K.]

A circle has no beginning.

[Clive-φ-Davidson ImagesNM]

The beginning of a circle is the center, thus the beginning is of equal distance from any one point, so it is everywhere. The circle is it's own beginning.

[Nadia Kutishcheva]

Welcome to Ravenclaw

[The Hunt]

If we assume we are talking just about chicken eggs and not eggs in general, the question is what makes a chicken egg a chicken egg? Is it a chicken egg because a chicken laid it or because a chicken hatches from it? I would say that the type of egg is dependant upon what created it. It is the egg of a chicken. If a chicken laid an egg with anything other than a chicken in it, it would still be a chicken egg, what ever was inside would be a mutation. which means the first chicken must have come from a "pre-chicken" egg, therefore the chicken must have come first.

[Ultimate Schnitzel]

It's all so clear now :D