The test tube?

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The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
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Originally posted by Krypton That article actually made me start this thread.. So where did the first chicken egg come from if there were no chickens?

Pick a hen at random, then put it next to her mother, put the mother next to her mother and so on until you have several million consecutive chicken generations lined up. If you were to walk down that line, you would not be able to point to a definitive spot in the series where all birds after that spot are chickens and all birds before it aren't - the changes from generation to generation are far too small to allow that. The rate of genetic change between a hen and her chick are probably hundreds of times greater, on average, than the genetic changes that are actually preserved (i.e. positively selected) over time in the active germ-line. We can talk apprehensibly about "genetic trees" or "common ancestors" in the context of phylogeny, but to talk about "species" - particularly in the fixed sense that we usually use the word - makes no sense.

What we could do, however, is walk down that line of chickens and identify the most recent bird to be related to every surviving chicken on the planet. For humans, this "Eve" probably lived about 60,000-100,000 years ago, but for chickens - given the shorter generational spans and the higher birth rates - this chicken "Eve" probably lived much more recently. If we say that this chicken - from which all other chickens are decended - marks the point at which chickens first came into existence (which wouldn't make a great deal of sense because as chicken generations go by that point will keep on moving further and further forward - but we'll ignore that for now) then we can say confidently that "the egg" came first, as that chicken was undoubtedly hatched from an egg.

It all makes sense when you think about it: what is a chicken, after all, if not simply the disposable vessel an egg uses to produce more eggs?

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Let me go get a quarter. We can settle this over a coin flip.

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Originally posted by twilightki : It feels like something you'd listen to at 4 in the morning, or listen to in your car while you're going in a tunnel.

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade Pick a hen at random, then put it next to her mother, put the mother next to her mother and so on until you have several million consecutive chicken generations lined up. If you were to walk down that line, you would not be able to point to a definitive spot in the series where all birds after that spot are chickens and all birds before it aren't - the changes from generation to generation are far too small to allow that. The rate of genetic change between a hen and her chick are probably hundreds of times greater, on average, than the genetic changes that are actually preserved (i.e. positively selected) over time in the active germ-line. We can talk apprehensibly about "genetic trees" or "common ancestors" in the context of phylogeny, but to talk about "species" - particularly in the fixed sense that we usually use the word - makes no sense. What we could do, however, is walk down that line of chickens and identify the most recent bird to be related to every surviving chicken on the planet. For humans, this "Eve" probably lived about 60,000-100,000 years ago, but for chickens - given the shorter generational spans and the higher birth rates - this chicken "Eve" probably lived much more recently. If we say that this chicken - from which all other chickens are decended - marks the point at which chickens first came into existence (which wouldn't make a great deal of sense because as chicken generations go by that point will keep on moving further and further forward - but we'll ignore that for now) then we can say confidently that "the egg" came first, as that chicken was undoubtedly hatched from an egg. It all makes sense when you think about it: what is a chicken, after all, if not simply the disposable vessel an egg uses to produce more eggs?

good answer..

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Originally posted by Moral Hazard You need to further define your terms. If by egg you mean egg in general or any type of egg then without question egg came first as there were many aquatic species that produced eggs millions of years priort to the evolution of the chicken. If by egg you mean specifically a Chicken Egg then the chicken came first. An egg is catagorized by what produced the egg, rather than what the egg produced. This is why the eggs we generally purchase are classified as chicken/emu/duck even though they are normally unfertalized and have no potential to produce any life. Given that an egg is named for what produced the egg then a chicken egg could not exist until such time as the first chicken laid it's first egg. Since the existance of a chicken egg is impossible without the prior existance of a chicken then clearly the chicken came first.

God damnit. Way back in grade school I came to the conclusion that the egg came first, and up until this no one had threatened that point of view at all. Very good point man, I gotta stop and think about this now

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