Saturday 27 April 2013

Question of the Millennium-"Which came first, Chicken or Egg?"- Simplified!

Question of the Millennium-"Which came first, Chicken or Egg?"- Simplified!












It is a question that has perplexed human since the ancient Greece to the 21st century and we're still dying to know. Which came first, chicken or egg?

This question would be very simple if we take it literally. Egg laying creatures existed far before chickens (340 MYA), so the egg came first. Therefore, a better refined mode of the question is, "Which came first, chicken or the 'chicken' egg? Thus if a chicken is born from an egg, where did the egg come from? Ergo if the egg is laid by a chicken, where did the chicken come from?

Research suggests that the protein essential for the formation of the chicken egg called OV-17 is only found in chicken ovaries. Without it, the chicken egg shell could not be formed. So without a chicken. you technically can't get a chicken egg. This is where biology and genetics comes into attack. 

During reproduction, two organisms pass along their genetic information in the form of DNA. But the replication of this DNA when a zygote differentiates is never 100% accurate and often produces minor changes for the new organism.

These small 'mutations' in DNA over thousands of generations create new species.But these mutations must occur only in the zygote, or the initial egg.
                                                                 So, a creature very similar to chicken, which we could call a 'proto-chicken' would have mated with another proto chicken and because of a small genetic mutation created the first chicken, which grew in an chicken egg. Or, it is also possible to call that it was a chicken growing in a proto- chicken egg.


Comparing both the scenario's, either the first chicken came from a 'chicken egg' or a 'proto - chicken egg', in the end of the day we can say that it came from an egg, being it a chicken egg or a proto-chicken egg. So, the EGG came first!



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