6 ms·

Eggs existed long before chickens. A whole 51% the internet currently appears to agree. Phew.

by scanr 5y ago

technothrasher 5y ago
The question obviously doesn't mean any egg, it is asking about chicken eggs. But the question still always seemed ambiguous to me only because the terms are vague. If you define a chicken egg as an egg that was laid by a chicken, then it is the chicken first. If you define it as an egg that a chicken was hatched from, then it was the egg first. Define your terms and the question is simple to answer.
- aahortwwy 5y ago
  Then the question just becomes which definition is correct.
  - Supermancho 5y ago
    But it's not about the definition, because the definition mentioned is not correct anymore than saying the definition is if the egg was laid on a Sunday. > If you define a chicken egg as an egg that was laid by a chicken Species are assumed to produce eggs of the same species. Like many convenient turns of phrase, this isn't strictly true. What the egg contains (unless the egg casing is a relevant attribute) is how it is characterized. A mutation exists in the developing embryo, so a non-chicken had a chicken-containing egg. This is a chicken egg, which necessarily came first. Looking at any given xenopregnancy (a hybrid Liger, or panda fetus in a cat, et al). The carrying species does not make the result of that species. eg If there was a non-chicken species (say, a turkey) which produced eggs that were genetically and practically identical to chicken-containing eggs, they would be called chicken eggs.
    - crdrost 5y ago
      I mean that's a bit over-simplistic... It's not that a nonchicken lays a chicken egg, that implies an either/orness of chickenhood that would be radically unique. What actually happened was that at around 10,000 years ago a group of birds similar to modern red junglefowl either migrated or was forcibly taken from northern Thailand to the Indian subcontinent, where they started mating with the local birds similar to grey junglefowl with whom they were still able to interbreed. If you call those each 99%-chickens each then you had a steady meeting of two 99%-chicken lines interbreeding until they formed something steadily closer to our 100%-chicken lines, but presumably also creating 98%-chickens etc. in their breeding population. The variation inside the breeding population is larger than the distance of the progenitor populations to the final result. Viewed this way, what actually caused chickens to happen was the migration, not the genetics. It was the part where the two red junglefowl groups came out of genetic contact and started to diverge. On the assumption that these red junglefowl were adults (which is obvious if it was a migration, but merely likely if it was forced by humans), this means that a population of non-chickens was divided into two subpopulations, one of which was chickens, one of which wasn't. So even agreeing that we should categorize the egg by the creature it produced immediately after hatching, you still get by this argument that a nonchicken egg hatched into a nonchicken which by circumstance became a chicken... Chickens came first, and then their chicken eggs.
      - not2b 5y ago
        Suppose you have a definition of a chicken that is rigorous enough to break any ties. Then the first chicken that meets this definition was hatched from an egg. That egg was laid by a non-chicken (some animal that was very close to, but not exactly, a chicken). So the egg came first.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        SamBam 5y ago
        > So the egg came first. Which egg? Obviously "the egg that the chicken hatched from" came first, no one's debating that. But that's all you've said. If the question is "which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg", then it depends on whether the chicken egg is one that houses the chicken, or the one that is laid by a chicken.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        A hybrid of a canary and a goldfinch is a mule. Would you really argue that those eggs hatching into mules are not mule eggs? I could see an argument that those eggs, coming out of canaries, could count as canary eggs, but not in a way that stops them from being mule eggs. "mule eggs" definitely needs to include the eggs that hatch into mules.
        jtsiskin 5y ago
        Even with this perfect definition there are still ambiguities. You could still debate if a non-chicken egg with chicken DNA is a chicken egg. Its shell and yolk, all contents, were produced by a non-chicken - imagine the eggshell was blue, not white, and the final allele change to become “chicken” switched the “egg color laid once grown” to white. If all this eggs contents were produced by a genetically non-chicken - the egg is blue - is it really a “chicken egg”? Imagine you took a chicken egg, and modified the DNA so that an elephant would hatch. Is this a “chicken egg (with elephant DNA)” or an “elephant egg (with shell, white, and yolk produced by a chicken)”?
        5y ago
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  If evolution is correct and I think we can skip debate on this, then the chicken is results of mutations from a previous lineage of animals… Those mutations happen at/inside the egg. At some point… little by little, two animals have an offspring that isn’t exactly like them. The chicken egg came before the chicken that laid it. Some other animal laid it. And likewise the egg existed before the chicken inside it developed. In no scenario that I can steelman does the chicken ever come first.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - feupan 5y ago
    Amen. Another way to put it is that a chicken was once an egg, so even if "the chicken came first," that chicken was once an egg.
    - SamBam 5y ago
      A chicken wasn't once an egg. A chicken was once a fertilized egg cell, but an "egg" is the vessel that contains the zygote [1], and was created entirely by the mother (i.e. it is not a result of fertilization). So a chicken was once in an egg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg
      - feupan 5y ago
        We’re not saying “what came first? The chicken or the zygote?” Consider the context before trying to correct people. You’re just being pedantic for no reason.
        SamBam 5y ago
        Huh? No, I'm saying something very specific that you may have missed. Many people in this thread are using the word "egg" in the same way as a female mammal releases an "egg" in estrus, i.e. the cell which will become an organism once fertilized. Hence the discussion elsewhere of how the mutation has already happened in this cell. For instance, besides this thread, another person said "resulting in the very first chicken ever. Which of course started out as an egg. I'm saying that a bird "egg", from the Wikipedia link, is not the gamete cell but rather simply the container, created by the mother. So statements such as "[the chicken] started out as an egg" or "a chicken was once an egg" (your statement) are simply incorrect, just as saying "a human baby was once a uterus" is wrong. It's not pedantic "for no reason" (at least any more than the rest of this by-definition pedantic discussion is).
gremlinsinc 5y ago
Maybe it should've been Eggs or That Which laid the Egg... To expand to dinosaurs, chickens, and Bronteroc's. Assuming there's just chickens, and we're talking just about chicken eggs, then the chicken came first. Chickens need a mother to hatch the egg, to create the egg in it's womb, etc. An egg cannot exist without a mother to birth it.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  How did the chicken come about though? If we define chicken as exactly what we have today, that means it must have been born in a hard shelled egg. I'm assuming that evolution would happen slowly over time, the creature that ended up becoming the chicken would have had to already been laying eggs. The egg laying feature would need to already be present for it to be our modern day preciously defined chicken. The egg had to have come first
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > Assuming there's just chickens I don't think the question is about a fantasy world that only has chickens, and the chickens came from ????. Just treat it as "chicken" vs. "chicken egg".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Eggs existed long before chickens. A whole 51% the internet currently appears to agree. Phew.

by scanr 5y ago

Eggs existed long before chickens. A whole 51% the internet currently appears to agree. Phew.

The question obviously doesn't mean any egg, it is asking about chicken eggs. But the question still always seemed ambiguous to me only because the terms are vague. If you define a chicken egg as an egg that was laid by a chicken, then it is the chicken first. If you define it as an egg that a chicken was hatched from, then it was the egg first. Define your terms and the question is simple to answer.

aahortwwy 5y ago
Then the question just becomes which definition is correct.
- Supermancho 5y ago
  But it's not about the definition, because the definition mentioned is not correct anymore than saying the definition is if the egg was laid on a Sunday. > If you define a chicken egg as an egg that was laid by a chicken Species are assumed to produce eggs of the same species. Like many convenient turns of phrase, this isn't strictly true. What the egg contains (unless the egg casing is a relevant attribute) is how it is characterized. A mutation exists in the developing embryo, so a non-chicken had a chicken-containing egg. This is a chicken egg, which necessarily came first. Looking at any given xenopregnancy (a hybrid Liger, or panda fetus in a cat, et al). The carrying species does not make the result of that species. eg If there was a non-chicken species (say, a turkey) which produced eggs that were genetically and practically identical to chicken-containing eggs, they would be called chicken eggs.
  - crdrost 5y ago
    I mean that's a bit over-simplistic... It's not that a nonchicken lays a chicken egg, that implies an either/orness of chickenhood that would be radically unique. What actually happened was that at around 10,000 years ago a group of birds similar to modern red junglefowl either migrated or was forcibly taken from northern Thailand to the Indian subcontinent, where they started mating with the local birds similar to grey junglefowl with whom they were still able to interbreed. If you call those each 99%-chickens each then you had a steady meeting of two 99%-chicken lines interbreeding until they formed something steadily closer to our 100%-chicken lines, but presumably also creating 98%-chickens etc. in their breeding population. The variation inside the breeding population is larger than the distance of the progenitor populations to the final result. Viewed this way, what actually caused chickens to happen was the migration, not the genetics. It was the part where the two red junglefowl groups came out of genetic contact and started to diverge. On the assumption that these red junglefowl were adults (which is obvious if it was a migration, but merely likely if it was forced by humans), this means that a population of non-chickens was divided into two subpopulations, one of which was chickens, one of which wasn't. So even agreeing that we should categorize the egg by the creature it produced immediately after hatching, you still get by this argument that a nonchicken egg hatched into a nonchicken which by circumstance became a chicken... Chickens came first, and then their chicken eggs.
    - not2b 5y ago
      Suppose you have a definition of a chicken that is rigorous enough to break any ties. Then the first chicken that meets this definition was hatched from an egg. That egg was laid by a non-chicken (some animal that was very close to, but not exactly, a chicken). So the egg came first.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - SamBam 5y ago
        > So the egg came first. Which egg? Obviously "the egg that the chicken hatched from" came first, no one's debating that. But that's all you've said. If the question is "which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg", then it depends on whether the chicken egg is one that houses the chicken, or the one that is laid by a chicken.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        A hybrid of a canary and a goldfinch is a mule. Would you really argue that those eggs hatching into mules are not mule eggs? I could see an argument that those eggs, coming out of canaries, could count as canary eggs, but not in a way that stops them from being mule eggs. "mule eggs" definitely needs to include the eggs that hatch into mules.
      - jtsiskin 5y ago
        Even with this perfect definition there are still ambiguities. You could still debate if a non-chicken egg with chicken DNA is a chicken egg. Its shell and yolk, all contents, were produced by a non-chicken - imagine the eggshell was blue, not white, and the final allele change to become “chicken” switched the “egg color laid once grown” to white. If all this eggs contents were produced by a genetically non-chicken - the egg is blue - is it really a “chicken egg”? Imagine you took a chicken egg, and modified the DNA so that an elephant would hatch. Is this a “chicken egg (with elephant DNA)” or an “elephant egg (with shell, white, and yolk produced by a chicken)”?
      - 5y ago
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
If evolution is correct and I think we can skip debate on this, then the chicken is results of mutations from a previous lineage of animals… Those mutations happen at/inside the egg. At some point… little by little, two animals have an offspring that isn’t exactly like them. The chicken egg came before the chicken that laid it. Some other animal laid it. And likewise the egg existed before the chicken inside it developed. In no scenario that I can steelman does the chicken ever come first.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- feupan 5y ago
  Amen. Another way to put it is that a chicken was once an egg, so even if "the chicken came first," that chicken was once an egg.
  - SamBam 5y ago
    A chicken wasn't once an egg. A chicken was once a fertilized egg cell, but an "egg" is the vessel that contains the zygote [1], and was created entirely by the mother (i.e. it is not a result of fertilization). So a chicken was once in an egg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg
    - feupan 5y ago
      We’re not saying “what came first? The chicken or the zygote?” Consider the context before trying to correct people. You’re just being pedantic for no reason.
      - SamBam 5y ago
        Huh? No, I'm saying something very specific that you may have missed. Many people in this thread are using the word "egg" in the same way as a female mammal releases an "egg" in estrus, i.e. the cell which will become an organism once fertilized. Hence the discussion elsewhere of how the mutation has already happened in this cell. For instance, besides this thread, another person said "resulting in the very first chicken ever. Which of course started out as an egg. I'm saying that a bird "egg", from the Wikipedia link, is not the gamete cell but rather simply the container, created by the mother. So statements such as "[the chicken] started out as an egg" or "a chicken was once an egg" (your statement) are simply incorrect, just as saying "a human baby was once a uterus" is wrong. It's not pedantic "for no reason" (at least any more than the rest of this by-definition pedantic discussion is).

gremlinsinc 5y ago

Maybe it should've been Eggs or That Which laid the Egg... To expand to dinosaurs, chickens, and Bronteroc's. Assuming there's just chickens, and we're talking just about chicken eggs, then the chicken came first. Chickens need a mother to hatch the egg, to create the egg in it's womb, etc. An egg cannot exist without a mother to birth it.

netizen-936824 5y ago
How did the chicken come about though? If we define chicken as exactly what we have today, that means it must have been born in a hard shelled egg. I'm assuming that evolution would happen slowly over time, the creature that ended up becoming the chicken would have had to already been laying eggs. The egg laying feature would need to already be present for it to be our modern day preciously defined chicken. The egg had to have come first
Dylan16807 5y ago
> Assuming there's just chickens I don't think the question is about a fantasy world that only has chickens, and the chickens came from ????. Just treat it as "chicken" vs. "chicken egg".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]