You’ve probably heard of one of the most famous riddles, which asks about what came first, the chicken or the egg. You’ve also probably also chosen a straightforward answer to this riddle; either the chicken, or the egg. But is that really the right answer? If not, what actually came first; the chicken or the egg?
It might seem like a silly question, but the answer really depends on the way you view the question.
Metaphorically, the phrase can be used as an adjective to describe a situation where it’s unsure which of two events happened first; which event is considered the cause, and which is considered the effect. It means that it’s impossible to determine which of two things caused the other.
Biologically, though, it unravels a huge other problem. Most biologists declare that the egg came first, and that seemed to be the end. Millions of years ago, the egg was one of the most important steps in animal evolution, because eggs that could be laid on land meant that the small fish, bacteria, and other aquatic creatures were now able to go landward. Before the actual hard-shelled egg existed, vertebrates relied on bodies of water to lay their eggs in. Most amphibians, such as frogs, still face this problem.You’ll usually see a frog lay their eggs in a pond, instead of on land. This is because it’s not safe for the jelly-like egg, which could easily get squished. Plus, the eggs need moisture to stay stable. When a frog egg hatches, there’s a small tadpole that comes out, and as most people know, they’re unable to walk on land because of their lack of legs.
Looking at the birds point of view, true birds (like the ones we see today) didn’t actually show up until the late Jurassic period, around 165 to 150 million years ago, according to fossils that scientists have dug up. Logically, that means the egg came first. The first shelled egg most likely appeared around 325 million years ago, with a leathery and malleable texture. The earliest known examples of eggs like the ones we have today are from 200 million years ago, from the dinosaurs. Their eggs were about 100 microns thin (around how thin a single strand of human hair is), but they were rigid instead of flimsy like the banana peel you probably threw away from breakfast.
Now that we know where the egg came from, how about the chicken? At some point during the evolutionary period, the last ancestors of the modern chicken would’ve laid an egg with enough genetic differences to make it different from the parental species. The tiny chicken inside the embryo would’ve developed inside the chicken-egg-that’s-not-actually-a-chicken-egg before hatching. When it reached adulthood, it would’ve laid an egg, which may have been the first ever modern chicken egg. Evolution cannot be described as a linear process, but this would probably be the simplest way to describe how the chicken first came into existence.
Doesn’t that mean that the chicken came first? If there was a beta version of the chicken, then that should count, right?
It depends on your definition of the word ‘chicken’. If you count the “old chicken”–or the chicken that existed before the modern chicken–that existed before its evolution, when the first animal that the chicken originally came from was still living in the ocean. Probably a small microscopic speck of bacteria that would eventually grow into bigger fish, which became amphibians going onto land, which then slowly became birds which turned into the chicken. That small piece of bacteria can be counted as the first type of the ‘chicken’, but it isn’t really a ‘chicken’ like the ones we have today. The chicken surely descended from it, but you can’t point at bacteria and say, “Oh look, it’s a chicken!”
Some of you might be wondering what would happen if the chicken came before the egg. But unfortunately, that wouldn’t work out, because in simple words, it violates the laws of biology. One of the fundamental principles that’s used to describe a bird is that it’s hatched from an egg, and if the chick came before the egg, it wouldn’t be a bird. Such a scenario would require a completely different understanding of biology and the origins of life, which isn’t supported by our current understanding of science.
The chicken-or-egg question is a riddle that many people know and enjoy, and although most people would argue about the answer, everyone can agree that both the egg and the chicken have one thing in common.
They both taste delicious.