Which came first the chicken or the egg?

[Kivil 1,721]

Always when I am asking about who things came to be with my mother, she always says "Which came first the chicken or the egg?". Honestly I have no idea. So I came to ask all of you lovely people on the forums. (Before you tell me go look it up on the internet, I want to know your answers, not just one person's. Also I am doing it for the lulz  )

[PROJECT: Simon 3,953]

An egg? xD And then it grows, lays more eggs, and it continues  

[Malinter 3,064]

tbh i'd say the egg, given that genetic mutation exists, its possible two creatures could produce an egg that inturn creates a creature that isn't quite like the parents it comes from. XD

[honk friend 1,972]

The chicken or the egg? Actually I came first.

[PROJECT: Simon 3,953]

The chicken or the egg? Actually I came first.

Extremely, incredibly, hilarious

 

[-Octavia- 1,176]

A circle has no beginning.

 

Malinter's answer is also sound.

Edited October 24, 2015 by Wubtavia

[SFyr 1,982]

I have two answers for this.

First, from a stand point of species differentiation, well, it's an extremely slow and gradual process. The 'protochicken' or parent to the first chicken would essentially be the same animal. Same with the chicken egg and protochicken egg. In that way, neither really came first, they eventually just kinda.. happened.

Second, something I picked up in college: the egg has all the makings of a chicken, but no way to synthesize one of the proteins vital in its shell. Meanwhile, in a way, the adult chicken has the ability to make both an egg and a child chicken. Therefore, the egg depends on the chicken to produce it, but the chicken can self reproduce the fetus 'and' the egg. Chicken has to come first in this case.

 

EDIT: this argument kind of assumes we're talking about a chicken egg, haha. Otherwise, fish laid eggs, and fish predate chickens, thus the egg obviously comes first.

[Shift 4,271]

The egg, because as evolution worked its magic eventually, after dozens of chicken like things, one of them would lay an egg to a full chicken.

[SugarfootWillie 383]

Your question is actually a rhetorical question which simplifies the conflict between creationism and evolution.

 

Ultimately there is no answer, however I will provide what I believe is a short and comprehensive list answering your question to the best of my abilities.

 

TL;DR: At some point during primordial earth, there was an oily base of RNA and DNA floating around on the oceans that clumped together to form more complex molecules and eventually life, but experiments have yet to figure out what exact process lead to the pools of liquid crystal DNA and RNA.

 

 

http://www.astrobio.net/topic/origins/origin-and-evolution-of-life/liquid-crystal-life/

 

http://www.truthinscience.org.uk/tis2/index.php/evidence-for-evolution-mainmenu-65/51-the-miller-urey-experiment.html

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Another answer more specific to chickens: Dinosaurs came first, at some point they evolved into chickens and other byurds. Dinosaur eggs came first.

[Jinxie Umbra 149]

The egg came first. It was laid by the chicken's ancestor, chookasaurus. See diagram:

 

[SugarfootWillie 383]

@@Jinxie Umbra, that second-to-last chicken is immaculate!!! I wish I could've seen it in person.

[Kenshiro 13,492]

The egg comes first my friend =)

[Floofie 799]

This video explains it pretty well:

 

[CaptainDoubloon 856]

The egg, many animals were laying eggs before chickens.

[SilyGeny 369]

Uhm... the chicken may have came with an egg inside or the egg with a chicken inside so that's quite hard to define

[Alleviate 342]

The egg. Very simply. Chicken eggs are an example of amniotic eggs, which evolved as land reptile eggs to prevent desiccation. And reptiles have been laying eggs longer than chickens have existed. Bam. 

[Luna the Great of all the Russias 2,706]

Egg makes more sense to me as it would have had to have been laid by pre-chicken.

[Venomous 18,813]

This video does a good job at answering this:

[KeithDJohnson 40]

The Chicken came first. From a creationist view. Here's another question. How did the hen find the rooster?

Edited October 25, 2015 by KeithDJohnson

[Celtore 2,769]

If we're really strict about the definition of what a chicken is, clearly the egg came first. Reptiles were using eggs way before the chicken came along and maybe something was laying eggs before that. I'm on my phone so on the fly research is a bit hard.

 

Though the egg came first when we talk about the chicken, the great ancestor of the chicken at some point laid the first egg or even some other animal in a different evolutionary chain (or something that would eventually lead to the modern egg)

[Cimarronboy 247]

Supposedly trick question but not all eggs are avian. By that I mean other creatures lay eggs. Before birds and mammals there were lizards and bugs. Before them was pretty much all oceanic life, mainly fish and aquatic reptiles. Keep going until you get to the smallest living creatures that could lay eggs. I'd say either small invertebrates or fish. Therefore the answer is the egg, since all things started out single celled, then multi celled, then aquatic, fish, dinos, insects, tiny mammals then birds.  

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 40,306]

Breakfast is before lunch.

 

 

So the egg. 

 

I could give a very detailed answer on the subject but....

 

*looks at other posts*

 

Yup, that's been done already.

[Codelyy 1,281]

The egg of course came first. The animal before a chicken Evolved didn't just evolve into a chicken when alive. Animals evolve every single time a new baby is born. So a animal before the chicken laided a egg which then hatched and it turned out to be a chicken.

 

Slowly of course though but a egg needed to hatch to make the first ever chicken

[CuriousPony 156]

I imagine that the egg technically came first, because as the chicken evolved, it had to slowly come to be through egg after egg after egg.

 

However, the chicken is IN the egg, so.. didn't they kinda show up at the same time?

[Nsxile 25,711]

The egg came first technically, as it contained the genetic mutation that made the chicken what it is today.