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UltimaLimit
02-22-2005, 11:26 PM
Well, what do you guys think? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

I have my own solution to this, but I won't post it until later. I'm curious as to what you guys might have thought of.

Ouch!
02-22-2005, 11:29 PM
The egg of course. Through evolution the first modern chicken's parents must have not been a modern chicken but something very, very similar. Therefore the egg came before the chicken.

Craig
02-22-2005, 11:30 PM
You beat me to it, Ouch!

Ouch!
02-22-2005, 11:30 PM
Wewt, I win!

Rye
02-22-2005, 11:32 PM
What Ouch! said.

Chris
02-22-2005, 11:33 PM
The Rooster!!

Yamaneko
02-22-2005, 11:35 PM
The egg because they've been around longer than chickens. :D

Skogs
02-22-2005, 11:49 PM
That depends how you define an 'egg'. If it's a hard-shelled, nutrient-containing incubator for a growning embryo, then the chicken came first, because there were 'organisms' before there were 'eggs'. However, if you define 'egg' as the oocyte which develops into a full-grown chicken, then the egg came first as the first organisms were, in fact, single cells.

:D

UltimaLimit
02-22-2005, 11:54 PM
EGG = what you crack and scramble for breakfast
CHICKEN = what you decapitate and turn into drumsticks

Squall04
02-22-2005, 11:57 PM
EGG = what you crack and scramble for breakfast
CHICKEN = what you decapitate and turn into drumsticks
In that case it would most likely to be the chicken since it would be older. Unless the eggs you are eating for breakfast have been around for a long time.

udsuna
02-23-2005, 12:05 AM
Are we asking whether or not the *CHICKEN* egg came before the chicken, or just eggs in general?
Because those very-close-to-chickens would have laid a very-close-to-chicken egg. Which would have held the chicken. Like in Jurassic Park, with the ostrich eggs and the lizards/mutant- type dinosaurs.

UltimaLimit
02-23-2005, 12:09 AM
If it's other species' eggs, ignore it. But if it's a CHICKEN EGG, or a *chicken ancestor*'s egg, then we'll count it.

I'll post my solution on this tomorrow or Thursday. I should've made this a poll.

udsuna
02-23-2005, 12:15 AM
So, if a *chicken ancestor's* egg counts, does that mean that the *chicken ancestor* also counts as a chicken?

Skogs
02-23-2005, 12:21 AM
If you're thinking of *only* chicken eggs then I reason as follows:

The first chicken was born from an egg.
But the first egg wasn't laid by a chicken.

Thus, the egg came first.


But really I could argue either way until the cows come home.

omnitarian
02-23-2005, 01:05 AM
EGG = what you crack and scramble for breakfast

Well, if we are to assume that only unfertilized chicken eggs count as eggs, then the chicken most certainly came first. [/wisearse]

Anyway, the flaw about defining "chicken" is that our defenition of what constitutes a chicken is purely subjective, at least in anagenesis (1 population changes enough over time to be considered a new species, instead of 2+ populations going off into distinct evolutionary branches).

Let's make a diagram! The further to your right, the more evolved you are.

Old Pheasant -- New Pheasant -- Old Junglefowl -- New Junglefowl -- Old Chicken -- New Chicken

Each intermediate species can breed with the intermediate species to its left, as well as the intermediate species to its right. New Junglefowl could breed with Old Junglefowl and Old Chickens. Based on the defenition of the word species (that is, 2 animals of different species can not produce fertile offspring), New Junglefowl can be considered the same species as chickens. They can breed with Old Chickens, so New Junglefowl and Old Chickens belong to the same species.

But they aren't the same species, because science mostly arbitrarily decides wether or not an animal has changed enough to warrant a new species. We certainly don't have a time machine to see who can breed with what and make a horribly complex chart detailing at what point New Pheastants couldn't breed with New Junglefowl. Speciation doesn't occur in one generation; it is a large change over time that doesn't suddenly determine if animal A can have babies with animal B.

Now I've completely lost track of what this has to do with the discussion at hand, so I'll back off now. ;)

rubah
02-23-2005, 01:10 AM
Neither could come first, you'd need two of either to get any more:)

But I'll say chicken, just so they can incubate the eggs^_^

T-MaN
02-23-2005, 03:40 AM
I believe God created a chicken who then laid itz egg. ( Yes, i am one of those ppl who believe that God is the creator of all life and death if u were wondering)

ffrinoa8
02-24-2005, 03:06 PM
See i agree with T-man because without the chicken to create the egg and nurture its baby it would die...... :)

Dr.K
02-24-2005, 03:55 PM
The mutation (bad word? basically the 'change in the genes', chiasma, whatever) of whatever species gave rise to the 'modern' chicken would most likely have occured inside it's sex cells, so that what we call the "chicken" started off inside the egg after it was fertilised, then hatched out. So technically, I guess the egg did come first.

EDIT: Ok. That's basically what Ouch! said. *Monkey slaps forehead*

Destai
02-24-2005, 04:05 PM
If I had to guess, Egg. How dos a chickens life start? Egg! :eek:

Cless
02-24-2005, 04:16 PM
I couldn't be bothered hurting my brain at the moment. So I'll say both. Not the chicken, not the egg, but rather a chicken coming out of an egg put on this earth by aliens! Umm... :confused: Yeah aliens!!! :riiight:

Please ignore my silliness. I don't know what's gotten into me today. :shame:

UltimaLimit
02-25-2005, 07:29 AM
That's all right, Cless, my theory's only slightly more credible. Actually, it's less credible if you're an atheist, because it runs like this:

One day, God decided to make Himself breakfast. (To those wisearse's out there who'll call me on it, He decided to eat just for the heck of it, OK? Even though He doesn't really need to.) Anyway, He wanted to try something different, so he made a bunch of eggs. He took DNA from every animal and blended it into one to make the yolk. (That, BTW, is why everything tastes like chicken.) He made Himself a big omelette, and after He was done, He noticed He had a few of the eggs left over. Curious, He decided to let them hatch and see what happened. And thus, we have chickens.

The egg, in other words.

What do you think? I solved two mysteries with one theory. :D

Rainecloud
02-25-2005, 07:30 AM
You can't really say unless you were there at the time.

*wins*

Shlup
02-25-2005, 08:57 AM
Protien

Shoden
02-25-2005, 09:08 PM
i think the egg

ok evolution has had some weird stages the firt eggs were probably single Organism Cells coming together and taking form this became an egg and allt he adta combines together to make an early chicken and the first chicken nuggets

Giga Guess
02-25-2005, 09:20 PM
Ouch! got my answer.

So yeah. Egg.

[Edit] Mott?! What the hell was I thinking...?

Cz
02-25-2005, 09:50 PM
Ouch! summed it up perfectly. Quite when the evolution from a previous fowl into the currrent chicken took place is unclear, but before that evolution could take place an egg would have to be laid.

So much for unanswerable questions. :rolleyes2

Shoden
02-25-2005, 09:54 PM
think before the fowl think when humans were nothing but bacterium cells

some of these fused together and mutated into eggs these egs became early chickens who could lay eggs to produce more chickens

but these cells could have became a chciekn straight away

unanswerable indeed

such a pointless question but quite amusing

Giga Guess
02-25-2005, 10:14 PM
'Course, one does have to define "Chicken."

As in Chicken as we know it, or A chicken's relative straight back to the Primordial Ooze...

Shoden
02-25-2005, 10:17 PM
Chickens evolved from giant Dodo birds i saw it on walking with beasts

ljkkjlcm9
02-25-2005, 10:20 PM
You know why this question is asked, because no matter what you say, you can't know for sure, and who says one had to come before the other? They could have come to be at the same time!

I'm sorry, I'm not one to believe god created everything the way it is, and I certainly don't believe all the stories in the bible, sorry people..

THE JACKEL

Skogs
02-26-2005, 12:16 AM
Protien

RNA, actually. It can be autocatalytic.

T-MaN
02-26-2005, 01:48 AM
I'm sorry, I'm not one to believe god created everything the way it is, and I certainly don't believe all the stories in the bible, sorry people..

THE JACKEL

Well, there are stories from other sources than just the bible, maybe one of them has sumthing u mite believe in :)

Levian
02-26-2005, 01:56 AM
Dinosaurs layed eggs way before chickens even existed, so the egg came before the chicken. Millions of years actually. :p

UltimaLimit
02-26-2005, 08:14 AM
such a pointless question but quite amusingThat was the idea, yeah. :)


You can't really say unless you were there at the time.

*wins*Actually, I was in a way. God came to me in a dream and explained the whole thing. I call it a "theory" because I couldn't remember all of it, but I wrote down what I did recall the moment I woke up.

Coincidentally, this was shortly after suffering repeated blows to the head.

*ties*