• Question: what do you think came first the chicken or the egg ???

    Asked by anon-215212 to Laura, Kathryn, Ian, Chris, Bogdana, Alex on 14 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Ian Cookson

      Ian Cookson answered on 14 Jun 2019:

      Chicken. Only a chicken can lay an egg, but another animal might have evolved into a chicken.

    • Photo: Kathryn Atherton

      Kathryn Atherton answered on 16 Jun 2019:

      The egg. Birds’ eggs (and, indeed, other types of eggs) precede chickens in the evolutionary timeline (it was not specifically stated in your question that ‘the egg’ exclusively referred to chicken eggs 😉 ).

    • Photo: Bogdana Huma

      Bogdana Huma answered on 17 Jun 2019:

      What I like about this saying is how, when we hear it, we assume that the chicken and the egg are part of the same species (even though that’s not specified at all, we just ‘hear’ it that way). If, say, we had a chicken and a dinosaur egg, then it would be absolutely clear the latter came first.

    • Photo: Laura Fisk

      Laura Fisk answered on 17 Jun 2019:

      A pre-chicken laid an egg that a chicken came out of, who then laid chicken eggs… (Ok, I admit it it, everyone already gave good answers, I’m just filling 🙂 )

    • Photo: Chris Fullwood

      Chris Fullwood answered on 18 Jun 2019:

      The egg. Unless you believe that a species can mutate during its lifespan, then the first animal that we call a ‘chicken’ today must have hatched out of an egg.

    • Photo: Alex Lloyd

      Alex Lloyd answered on 18 Jun 2019:

      I think the chicken, but this isn’t my strength so I’m not sure what the evidence says!

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