• Question: what came first the chicken or the egg and reasons ?

    Asked by mikewhite3 to Anna, Craig, Richard, Shane, Sue on 14 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by chanelle1996.
    • Photo: Anna Williams

      Anna Williams answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Hi Mikewhite3,
      This is a great question!
      As chickens have evolved over millions of years, each generation that has survived has had more characteristics of modern chickens than the last generation. Scientists have looked at all these generations (if they’re available in the fossil record), and have decided when the birds were enough like the chickens we know today to be categorised scientifically as chickens. Therefore, at some point in the evolution of a chicken, a wierd proto-chicken (not quite a chicken) laid an egg, and it hatched into a bird that shared all the characteristics of a modern chicken…so, my answer is, that the egg came first!

    • Photo: Richard Case

      Richard Case answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      I have actually researched this question in real life….

      I was having pub grub with my wife… I ordered Ham and Egg and my wife ordered the Smothered Chicken…. I can let you know that……

      THE EGG CAME FIRST 😀

      Not sure if I will get the same result if I repeat the experiment…. but hey ho, thats science!

    • Photo: Shane Pennington-Cooper

      Shane Pennington-Cooper answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Hello Mike,

      Well the obvious answer is the egg, as reptiles came from eggs and they came way before chickens, now if you had said the chicken or the chicken egg then as Anna said it would be the egg however the layer of this egg would not have been the chicken as we see today, thank you evolution.

    • Photo: Sue Carney

      Sue Carney answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi mikewhite3. I came to this question a little later than everyone else, having read it and thought “That’s really difficult, I’ll come back to that!”

      My gut reaction was ‘egg’, and having seen everyone else’s answers, I agree with them – some creature way back in the evolution of the chicken, not quite yet a chicken, laid an egg…

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