2019-04-06 - Chicken or the Egg

People have long debated which came first, the chicken or the egg? Since genetic variation and mutations arise from the fertilization process the egg must have come first. Two proto-chickens got together and they produced an egg from which a chicken hatched. The hatching process doesn't change the animal inside of the egg and so a chicken must come from a chicken egg which was laid by proto-chicken parents.

That being said it does raise a nomenclature question. Is a chicken egg a chicken egg because it contains a chicken or because it was laid by a chicken? An unfertilized chicken egg is still considered to be a chicken egg even though it doesn't contain a chicken. This means that the egg from which the first chicken hatched was not a chicken egg because it was laid by a proto-chicken and so the chicken came first. Later that chicken laid chicken eggs.

At the same time changes in animal populations occur over long periods of time and are usually the result of environmental changes or some other external effect. There was probably never a specific first chicken. Something happened which caused the factors that influenced the survival of proto-chickens to change leading to different characteristics being more ideal and eventually leading to a population that was different enough from past generations to be considered a different species and so neither the chicken or the egg came first. They appeared at the same time.

It's all just a matter of perspective.