• Question: What comes first a chicken or the egg?

    Asked by Vicki to Francesca, Laura, Matthew, Andrew, Rebecca on 7 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by SilentSwiftwave.
    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 7 Nov 2014:

      Ah, the age-old question! I’m not a biologist, but I would say that the egg came first.

      It depends what you mean by “chicken”, but reptiles and fish lay eggs and, as a species, they both will have been around for considerably longer than anything that we today would recognise as a “chicken”!

    • Photo: Matthew Camilleri

      Matthew Camilleri answered on 7 Nov 2014:

      I remember I have had a number of debates on this questions with my friends, and we never came to a conclusion. My point of view has always been the sme though;

      Through the process of evolution there are always error when transferring genes from the parent to the offspring which result in mutations, that will either increase or decrease the chance of the survival of the offspring. This means that the chicken would have been born through an egg from a parent which was not a chicken, which would give the grand answer that the egg came first.

      Apart from this one would have to realise that the process of actually creating the chicken species would have taken thousand if not millions of years, but with the same concept the egg would always come before the chicken.

      So here you have it, the egg came before the chicken 🙂

    • Photo: Laura Schofield

      Laura Schofield answered on 7 Nov 2014:

      Hi Vicki!

      I agree with the guys. Evolutionists would argue the egg came first because as Matthew said, something that wasn’t a chicken would have laid an egg and out popped a chicken! Creationists would argue that God filled the Earth with animals, fish and birds so the chicken.

      Personally I’m an evolutionist so I would say the egg. But until we manage to build a time machine I guess we don’t know for certain!

      Laura

    • Photo: Francesca Palombo

      Francesca Palombo answered on 8 Nov 2014:

      I guess the egg! It is fascinating to think that the miracle of life starts with a fragile creature

Comments

  • Photo: Vicki

    Vicki commented on :

    I asked my step dad and he said that you need a chicken to produce the egg and you also need an egg to produce a chicken

  • Photo: Andrew

    Andrew commented on :

    Yes, that is the age-old philosophical question. It is one of those ‘trick’ questions that, assuming that life does not evolve, cannot be answered! With hundreds of millions of years however, and a bit of evolution, we can trace life back to single celled organisms which, ultimately, are a bit like eggs