Chicken and Egg

How many times have you heard the expression ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’

Look, the egg came before the chicken!  Basically you’ve got two choices.  If you’re a Creationist then the chicken came first.  If you are an Evolutionist then the egg wins.

So where did the first chicken come from?  It came from an egg laid by a chicken-like creature.

Of course it’s not that simple.  For a new species to be formed it must breed and create offspring.   Eventually these offspring will not be able to produce living progeny other than by interbreeding with their own kind.  That’s how evolution works.

One chicken was never going to be enough.  There must have been a whole flock of chicken-like creatures which, for some reason of selection, became more chicken-like through each successive generation.  The reason could have been physical isolation, climate change, predator pressure or a whole host of other factors.

Eventually they became recognisably chickens rather than chicken-like.  Today’s chickens are still evolving but more due to man’s influence.  They are moving further and further from the original chickens or their forebears, with more white meat, less fat and quicker growth.

You can read an excellent explanation of how all this works in Steve Jones’ book ‘Almost like a Whale’  and of course Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ .

Everything has a beginning and everything must have an end and so next time someone says which came first, you know it was the egg.