EDIT : It seems as no one understood what i was talking about and maybe its my fault for not elaborating . I always thought chicken was a metaphor for this paradox and not really meaning chicken as a specific spiece . So my question is how did the ancestor of chicken came to be if it was born (egg) wouldn’t it need a parent or if it was a parent (chicken ) woudn’t it need to be born ? Or did all the creatures start out as bacteria and climbed out from ocean through evalution if so why isn’t any new species being born this way or am i missing something ?
I’m genuinely curious OP how you could even consider the chicken coming first? How did you imagine that scenario going down?
If nothing else, eggs were a way of producing offspring many millions of years before anything you can reasonably call a chicken.
I can’t really remember the study or whatever, but the answer is egg. You’d need the mutation in DNA in the laid egg before you could get the chicken. And then propagation after until chickens are everywhere of course.
This is a simplified version of what I read, but that’s basically it.
Unless you define “chicken egg” as an egg laid by a chicken. It’s question of definitions
But the question doesn’t specify a “chicken egg”. It simply says “egg”. So the answer is egg, laid by some chicken ancestor.
the egg that hatched the first chicken, obviously, laid by something that was not quite what we’d consider a chicken.
Egg
To answer your other question, yes there are still single-cell organisms evolving into new species all the time, in the ocean and elsewhere. That includes new multi-cellular species evolving from single cells all the time. But it takes a long time to develop from cell, to clump of slime, to something with legs. So you might not notice the changes if you aren’t super patient.
Or were those separate questions? Are you asking if chickens descended from single-cell organisms? Yes they did. With a lot of steps in between.
The answer is egg, because egg-laying creatures predate the chicken.
If we count it as a chicken egg only, then it depends on if you describe a chicken egg as “an egg laid by a chicken” or “an egg that could hatch into a chicken”.
Um no.
The foetus is first formed in the uterus and then the hen lays down the calcium layer around it.
So it depends on whether you consider a foetus a chicken or not.
I think you mean the embryo; it takes some time after being laid for the zygote inside the egg to develop to the point it could be considered a fetus.
Fish, arthropods, etc, had eggs millions of years before chickens.
_ /\ _
Dinos (
within the arthropods) are an easy example.Edit: correction
Aren’t all dinosaurs chickens ?
Afaik, is the other way around. All birds are dinosaurs, but there are non-avian dinosaurs as well.
Chickens evolved from earlier animals. The process is gradual, of course, but we can say that at some point some proto-chicken ancestor laid an egg that was different enough genetically that it counts as a chicken. In other words, a non-chicken laid a chicken egg, which eventually grew up to be the first chicken. Therefore, the egg came first.
at some point some proto-chicken ancestor laid an egg that was different enough genetically that it counts as a chicken. In other words, a non-chicken laid a chicken egg
This is incorrect. If I take an ostrich egg, empty it out through a small hole, then put a chicken fetus inside, it does not suddenly become a chicken egg. We must therefore conclude that “chicken egg” can only reasonably be defined as an egg laid by a chicken.
The proto-chicken ancestor can never lay a chicken egg, it can at most lay a proto-chicken egg which by some mutation contains a chicken. Therefore the chicken came first.
When science kills the mystery, semantics keeps the debate alive!
but we can say that at some point some proto-chicken ancestor laid an egg that was different enough genetically that it counts as a chicken
This is not correct. At no point can the offspring in a single generation be differnet enough to be called a different species.
What we call “species” are just current snapshots of time. Species only make sense in a narrow timeframe. In reality things change very slowley over a large amount of time and there a no clear transition points.
Something not defined as a chicken would have to lay an egg that hatched something defined as a chicken at some point. Otherwise we couldn’t have chickens.
But as you say the definition is the problem with this question.
This is not correct. At no point can the offspring in a single generation be differnet enough to be called a different species.
I’m not saying we should call it a different species but if we’re saying species Y is the direct descendant of species X, then, we can imagine a dividing line, and the line must always begin with an egg because eggs are different from their parents but adults are not different from the egg they started off as.
In reality things change very slowley over a large amount of time and there a no clear transition points.
Isn’t that obvious?
But that line can only ever be imaginary. There was never a proto-chicken that birthed a chicken. All chickens were birthed by chickens, all proto-chickens birthed proto-chickens.
We can make an imaginary line, but if went looking for it we would never find it.
Nonsense. All you do is say “Here is what defines a chicken” and then, advancing backwards through the generations, point to the first creature who didn’t meet that criteria. That’s your “proto-chicken” and everything after it is a “chicken.” Yes, the last proto-chicken and first chicken would be considered the same species as one another if we were building a taxonomy of species today, but we’re not; this is a historical exercise.
The definition may be based on some scientific criteria that’s specific to a point-in-time and may be somewhat arbitrary as a result, but it’s not “imaginary.”
Incorrect. Until the chicken hatched it was a proto chicken.
“Proto chicken” in this context refers to a genetic ancestor of the chicken. An egg hatches into the exact same species as the egg itself, but the egg is genetically different from the mother that laid the egg, and in this thought experiment, we’re talking about the mother being different enough to call a different species.
So if the mother was genetically different enough to be called a different species then…say it with me… the chicken came first.
Species is just a thing we use because we like to put things in boxes. It’s all just transitions. The life between species could be described as it’s own species if we shifted the scale. Again, boxes.
No, that’s not right. The species transitioned from the proto-chicken to the chicken. Whichever specific individual we call the first chicken started off as (say it with me) an egg. The mother’s offspring was different enough to be the first chicken.
But you don’t know if the proto chicken’s offspring is a different kind of chicken until it’s hatched. That’s how you get a new species.
It’s a bit of a Schrodinger’s egg situation I guess.
For what it’s worth it’s possible to test the contents of an egg, but it’s moot because it doesn’t actually matter when we know. It exists independent of observation.
Eggs existed long before the chicken, or the species that gave birth to the chicken. What’s in that egg doesn’t matter, when it’s the latest in a long line of eggs, the contents of this egg can’t precede eggs.
The baby chicken in the egg is the same chicken that hatches from the egg, but we call it an egg until it hatches. Egg first.
You don’t know what’s in the egg until it hatches.
so true, it could be bees for all we know.
