• Question: what came first the chicken or the egg?

    Asked by kayacato to Lyn, Katy, Paul, PB, Ruth on 21 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Peter Balfe

      Peter Balfe answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      This one again! Chickens and indeed all birds evolved from egg-laying dinosaurs, so the egg wins.
      My question,- should the RSPB be renamed the RSPD? After all the birds are just flying dinosaurs really. 😉

    • Photo: Ee Lyn Lim

      Ee Lyn Lim answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      Peter’s got it! The question doesn’t say ‘chicken egg’ specifically, so there will have been eggs laid long before chickens evolved. If you DO mean ‘chicken egg’, then it depends whether you want that to mean ‘egg laid by a chicken’ (in which case the chicken came first) or ‘egg from which a chicken hatches’ (in which case the egg came first)!

    • Photo: Katy Brown

      Katy Brown answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      I always say egg! I think a chicken egg is an egg with a chicken inside it. That means the first chicken egg must have been laid by something other than a chicken….

    • Photo: Paul Waines

      Paul Waines answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      Got to be the egg, for the reasons the others have given.We know dinosaurs laid eggs, and evolved into birds, so the egg wins. In fact the egg comes before the dinosaurs as well for that matter…

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