• Question: What came first, the chicken or the egg?

    Asked by 9jucr to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 25 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by 9eltu, beccaa011, magnesiumfreak.
    • Photo: Gemma Staite

      Gemma Staite answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      I believe it had to be the egg. If chickens were produced by evolution, this means that they were produced by changes in their DNA. The DNA is altered at the embryo formation stage. Therefore, the chicken hatched from the egg, but the egg was not laid by a chicken.

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      The chicken!
      Genetic mutations during the life of the animal that gave rise to the chicken were pased down to its offspring by natural selection, until the modern chicken gradually appeared! Also they say that the chicken didn’t always have hard eggs like it does now… the shell of the egg evolved as well!!!

    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      I’m with Gemma on this one.

      If birds evolved from reptiles as Darwinian evolutionary theory says they did, then there are fossilized records of lizards and dinosaurs laying eggs, sometimes softshelled leathery ones. So I reckon when Gemma says “the chicken hatched from the egg, but the egg was not laid by a chicken” she’s bang on, the chicken ancestors laid eggs, and the things that came out of them eventually evolved into chickens!

      There was some evidence in 2006 that pointed to a reptilian ancestry for the humble chicken, meaning there were definitely eggs around before the chicken had evolved!

      Check this out::

      http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1666805

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