• Question: what came first the chiken or the egg?

    Asked by h3llo to Gemma on 22 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Gemma Sharp

      Gemma Sharp answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      The egg got in there first, well before the chicken.

      Dinosaurs used to lay eggs years before chickens turned up, but even if we’re talking specifically about chicken eggs, the egg still wins.

      Evolution is a slow process, so once upon a time there was a bird that laid eggs that probably looked a lot like a chicken, but it wasn’t a chicken. At some point two of those birds got together and had an egg, and low and behold when it hatched it was a chicken! To be honest, the parents probably didn’t even notice that their little chick wasn’t the same species as them because there was probably only a small difference in their genes.

      AND even if we’re talking specifically about one chicken, the egg STILL comes first, because the chick develops inside the egg, so the egg has to be about for the chick to develop. At that age the egg shell isn’t hard though.

      What an egg-cellent question, I hope you’ll be chicken out some of my other answers and voting for me this week, egg-spcially now I’ve thrown in some of these fowl puns 😉

      (sorry about the puns)

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