Saturday, September 25, 2010

Chicken or Egg Came First?

This can be considered a political question because it relates to the current debate of stem cell research... whether an unborn fetus is a human being.  Or in this case, whether a chicken is a chicken from conception.

The first chicken as an adult and the first chicken as a fetus is the same chicken. The chicken wasn't the first bird, only a new strain of bird when evolution underwent punctuated equilibrium.  The characteristics of chickens probably developed gradually, but if you had to pinpoint a point in time dividing the chicken lineage from its ancestors, that point would fall after the DNA of the offspring finished synthesizing.

However, in order for a species to be considered "a species", it has to be able to reproduce viable offspring and not be able to do the same with its ancestors/different lineage.  This occurs when a group of one species becomes isolated from its other group.  Changes gradually form until those two separate groups are unable to reproduce even when put back together.

A chicken egg is essentially a shell with a developing chicken inside it.  Remember however that a chicken cannot develop without its egg.

That said, if you assume that the chicken ISN'T the egg, and that a chicken is only a chicken when it is successfully born, the chicken came first.

Alternatively, if you assume that the chicken IS the egg, and that a chicken is a chicken from when it is conceived, the egg came first.

My personal opinion:  it is absolutely impossible to tell.  Because while some chickens would have been able to reproduce fertile offspring with the alternative offshoot of its ancestors, others of the same chicken species wouldn't have been able to.

*If you assume that the egg is the thing that came before the zygote formed, that egg would be part of the mother.  So to make things clear, egg=the thing after the zygote formed, not before.

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