h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

dinosaurs did not hatch from CHICKEN EGGS!!!! I refuse to believe that a dinosaur hatched from A CHICKEN EGG!!!!! Maybe a dinosaur egg, but not a chicken egg....

*see how frustrated people will become*

It wasn't that technical, was it?

B

Two points

1. As McGuiness king of the gypsies used to say

"Neither the egg nor the chicken came first; the cock came first."

2. All chickens come from eggs, there never was a chicken that didn't.
All eggs do not come from chickens, the first chicken egg would have been layed by something that was not yet a chicken but had developed the ability to lay chicken eggs (lets call it a protochicken),however see point 1.

And tachysa - well, you never mentioned chicken eggs in the question, did you?

B

If you want a serious answer, then I'd still say the egg, as there must have been a point in the evolutionary cycle where a proto-chicken mutated into the chicken we know today. That mutation would have come from an egg, but the egg would not have come from a chicken, merely something that is less evolved.

B

Wow! Simul-protochickens.

B

B; It's a Friday afternoon, a ham sandwich is too technical for me

I mostly agree with the proto-chicken theory. Unless God comes down and tells us otherwise and then points and does a Nelson "HA HA" laugh at our stupidity

"What came first, the chicken or the egg??"

it was the rooster of course

poor rooster. i think im going to go scramble some hen...

yes but what about chicken eggs, it's easy to come up with a stupid anwser or try and get round it, or try and look at the chickens arse, but It's not trying out the philosiphy at all.

-- DoctorMO --

I'd go with the egg too, when you think about the number of lower order animals that protect their offspring within some form of egg case. So the creature that evolved into a chicken would have been an egg layer.

And, of course, the 'chicken egg' would not have existed until it was laid by a chicken...

B

*sob* but how many millions of years before there was a chicken to lay an egg? and how did that chicken not hatch from a chicken egg if IT was a chicken?

it would have been the egg, the thing that laid it wouldnt quite yet have been a chicken, i laid an egg which was a chicken egg somehow

the creature that wasn't quite a chicken laid a bulk standard egg for that species. the creature that hatched from it was what we now call a chicken. the difference between these two creatures could be as trivial as the colour of the feathers. so the egg was first for the chicken to hatch forth. you see the eggs from either creature could be identical so the chicken egg was laid before the chicken was hatched, but it was called a [insert creature name here] egg, because it wsn't a chicken.