What came first the chicken or the egg?

The egg had to come first.

To answer this question appropriately, one must know how an egg is formed.

The eggs form naturally, whether or not it is fertilized. First, the yolk, the yellow nutrients of the egg, is released from an ovary and passed as a tiny fluid membrane ball through the female's reproductive tract. As it develops, the egg whites, or albumen, are secreted around it. Next, the shell develops as layers of calcium and other minerals build up around it. The egg is then passed through the body and exits as a fully formed egg. It is rather like an assembly line. In the birds body, there is a whole line up of undeveloped eggs, each at a more advanced stage than the one behind it, all lined up like small marbles. The eggs continue to develop constantly as long as the animal is alive, but the productivity varies depending on the time of year, whether the bird has chicks or not, and its age.

Different eggs form slightly differently, and with different minerals that their hosts diet dictates, so the construction (and thus colour, shape, etc.) can vary between species.

So, like a human female, eggs are constantly made and expelled. The difference with a chicken is that it has a shell around it because the chicken evolved that way, or that whatever species the chicken came from - genetically proven to be a hybrid between the Red and Grey Junglefowl, and so on and so forth, back through time until you get to the first time the egg shell mutation occured. Much like a human, offspring can only be formed if the ovum is inseminated. Natural selection found it useful for an animal to not have to carry around its young inside it until they reached maturation, so a species that lays its eggs outside and hides them cleverly will be able to survive more easily since it isn't slowed down.

Ovum were around long before the egg, the shell system is only an adaptation to protect it and help the parents survive. The answer is therefor, obviously, the egg, not the chicken.

[edit on 20-8-2008 by OnionCloud]

[edit on 20-8-2008 by OnionCloud]

reply to post by OnionCloud

but all of that say's
it must pass threw a body ect... or the egg wouldn't exist.

reply to post by beforetime


I'm really not sure what your post means. Try to reformulate it in to something coherent.

According to the widely accepted theory, in the primordial "soup" of Earth's early oceans, there were tide pools where certain objects started to replicate themselves, eventually leading to the first single celled organisms. If you look at it this way, it is the "egg" which comes before the "chicken".

reply to post by pavil


About life, taken from a post I made in a different topic on these forums about experiments to prove primordial ooze life:

Source

The experiment used water (H2O), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3) and hydrogen (H2). The chemicals were all sealed inside a sterile array of glass tubes and flasks connected together in a loop, with one flask half-full of liquid water and another flask containing a pair of electrodes. The liquid water was heated to induce evaporation, sparks were fired between the electrodes to simulate lightning through the atmosphere and water vapor, and then the atmosphere was cooled again so that the water could condense and trickle back into the first flask in a continuous cycle.

At the end of one week of continuous operation Miller and Urey observed that as much as 10-15% of the carbon within the system was now in the form of organic compounds. Two percent of the carbon had formed amino acids, including 2-3 of the 22 that are used to make proteins in living cells, with glycine as the most abundant. Sugars, lipids, and some of the building blocks for nucleic acids were also formed. Nucleic acids (DNA, RNA) themselves were not formed. As observed in all consequent experiments, both left-handed (L) and right-handed (D) optical isomers were created in a racemic mixture. Virtually all amino acids in the proteins of living cells are left-handed amino acids. Any right-handed amino acids, for the most part, are poisonous to the construction of the protein, causing it to unravel. Equal amounts of left- and right-handed amino acids would not be an environment friendly to life.

Right there you have some of the materials for RNA and DNA formed within one week from water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen, for nucleic acids. Organic life from simple chemicals without intervention beyond that of early earth atmospheric conditions. All abundant in earths early history. Alternatively, ancient life could have been delivered by a meteorite.

This is kind of getting off track, though.

[edit on 20-8-2008 by OnionCloud]

The answer is they are INTERDEPENDENT.
Interdependence is a sophisticated concept to understand and science
is just starting to look deeply at it. In the latter 21st century it will be
taught in college as part as the regular curriculum. It's a bit ahead of
the curve right now.

well no matter how you look at It the chicken came first.

Evolution would tell us that this chicken must have came from some other chicken like creature before becuase chicken did not exist yet and it has to branch off from an ancestor.

If you are religious and believe in Christ or other supreme being that is all loving, then I don't think it would be very nice of them to create a bunch of eggs to start with no parents to take care of it

my 2cent

The hen came...


Get it?

reply to post by Tapped In


I like this answer. This is very true. No one and no thing CAN find the gap in a cycle.

to answer this i will turn to the bible story of creation :

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

so he made the animals as working crawling, flying, swimming things....and then told them to go forth and multiply....now you can't expect a load of eggs to start reproducing.....therfore the chicken came first.....

[edit on 21-8-2008 by adamclement]

so he made the animals as working crawling, flying, swimming things.....therfore the chicken came first.....

That's not what the world he created says, though. Oh well!

reply to post by beforetime





DUH use mr. common sense. it was the egg that came first.
that wierd cell that first spontainiously popped into existance evolved. then, then, the first chicken EVER would have hatched from the egg. it's layer would not have been classed as a chicken, since this was the first chicken.

science is fact.

religion is beleif.

reply to post by beforetime


The egg. Obviously. The creature that laid the egg was nearly, but not exactly, a chicken. Its offspring (in the egg) had slight mutations that bring it in line with what we now call a chicken.

This is only a quandry for those who don't understand evolution.

Divine beings/energy from another planet/universe/dimension/time, that we will ever truely know about while we are alive because its a big secret and keeps us as good slaves.
Made all things which included some chickens with some eggs in them.
Then the male chicken did the wild thing with the female chicken and fertilized the eggs which then it hatched and made more chickens.
Even the chickens are not allowed to know who created them because its a big secret and keeps them as good slaves to be eaten by things.
Otherwise the chickens, along with man, may just get angry if they know the real story and not want to play ball anymore.

Alternatively, we are a minuscule existence that lives a time-warped reality/parallel universe, and we are graciously floating through the air on another planet as part of an atom (perhaps smaller than a quark) of saliva (mostly H20) that is being spit from the mouth of one Keith Hernandez. We exist in this time warp, so 1 second of their time is practically immeasurable for us, and we can't observe reality on their scale. Eventually, though, we will collide with the right temple of a head that belongs to a person known as Kosmo Kramer, and all life will cease to exist.

I think I like my version better. Just as unverifiable, but far more entertaining.

If the egg came first then there would be life on all the planets in our solar system.

Oh, there's not!

Then the chicken came first.

...and I'm quoting the inimitable Beastie Boys here...

"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
I ate the chicken and then I ate his leg."

My other thought on this thread is simply "wow."

My love for ATS knows no limit.

God bless you and keep you, OP.

Originally posted by OnionCloud
Alternatively, we are a minuscule existence that lives a time-warped reality/parallel universe, and we are graciously floating through the air on another planet as part of an atom (perhaps smaller than a quark) of saliva (mostly H20) that is being spit from the mouth of one Keith Hernandez. We exist in this time warp, so 1 second of their time is practically immeasurable for us, and we can't observe reality on their scale. Eventually, though, we will collide with the right temple of a head that belongs to a person known as Kosmo Kramer, and all life will cease to exist.

I think I like my version better. Just as unverifiable, but far more entertaining.

The saliva would be even more ripe for life if it were Lenny Dykstra's.

[edit on 9.12.2008 by ItsTheQuestion]

reply to post by beforetime


an egg

A single cell grows into something, if you can show me, in science, anything where nothing becomes something, complete, in an instance then there you go it would be the chicken

david

reply to post by drevill


What are you smoking? Can I have some?

The egg came first, but not because of what you say. Please, for the love of the Mighty Jewish Zombie himself, study evolution. Give it some actual effort. Come back and read what you wrote, and laugh.

Then apologise for embracing ignorance.