The chicken or the egg?

originally posted by: dollukka
There are metamorphosis in insects, fishes, toads and frogs .. but in proto birds really ? What ever creature laid the egg which hatched into chicken ( i doubt it was any insect, fish or toad ) was a non chicken and therefor the egg came first.

That's not how evolution works. Neither the chicken nor the chicken egg came first. Their ancestors did. We're talking about groups of populations, not a single chicken born of a single random mutation. You didn't have some other random bird lay an egg that hatched into a chicken. You had a population of chicken-like creatures that had a dominant trait emerge over millions of years that helped their survival and passed this trait or series of traits down until the newer chickens couldn't breed with the older ones. They were then their own species and something in the environment changed so the older chicken ancestors died out, while the new ones prospered. The egg in general long predates chickens, but if you are referring to chicken eggs specifically there is no answer to the question. Both are wrong. They emerged at the same time, which is likely over a period of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years of slow change to the chicken ancestors AND their eggs. I know it's a philosophical question, but it's a nonsensical one because neither came first.

a reply to: Barcs

I'm nit-picking here, because in general terms your account of how evolution proceeds is perfectly correct. But chickens didn't evolve through hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection; they were bred from the Asian jungle-fowl, Gallus gallus, about 8,000 years ago.

The chicken IS the egg.

Time is but a persistent illusion.

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: Barcs

I'm nit-picking here, because in general terms your account of how evolution proceeds is perfectly correct. But chickens didn't evolve through hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection; they were bred from the Asian jungle-fowl, Gallus gallus, about 8,000 years ago.

Excellent point. Modern chickens are results of human selection, rather than natural selection, similar to dogs and cats in the last 10,000 years or so.

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: Diderot
The first chicken would have been born from an egg laid by a protochicken.
Then the chicken would have laid the first chicken egg.

The sequence goes;
1) Last protochicken
2) Last protochicken egg
3) First chicken
4) First chicken egg.

The chicken came first.

My question is what did that chicken mate with? It couldn't mate with a protochicken because then we would classify it to as a pro to chicken as a species are any animal that can mate and have viable offspring

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

The answer to that question is already in the thread. Not that you really want to know; you just want to start an argument about evolution. You pull this trick in thread after thread, derailing each one. Go away.

There is no single Answer to the OP's question.

In a basic argument, a Chicken is required to produce the egg. Hence, the chicken came first.

In a Scientific argument, it could be assumed that creatures laid eggs long ago before chickens evolved. Some small lizard thingy could have kept making small changes every generation until one day something hatched from a new egg that did not really fit into to the rest of the spawn. That Thing would proceed to mercilessly exterminate all its siblings and take all the mates for itself. Thus all the next eggs that follow will come with chickens.

Bonus answer for religious folks. God created chickens, but then he saw that they were some fragile weaklings, and then with his infinite mercy, HE erected a shield of pure white to protect these new chickens until they are strong enough to venture into the world on their own. But our god is also a just and testing god, so HE decided to test each chicken. "If thou wishes to venture out into the world, you must prove thyself capable by destroying that which protects you.".... so yeah, god created chickens then HE put them in eggs.( HE told me so last night...repeatedly).