• Question: Which came first the chicken or the egg? What do you think from a scientific view?

    Asked by vikki to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 13 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by coops666, ciaragrimesxox.
    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 13 Jun 2012:

      Hi again vikki! I’ll stick to my answer in the chat earlier, which is that in evolution we first had organisms that didn’t produce eggs (we have found fossils as old as 3 billion years!), and only 1200 million years ago did organisms appear that did produce eggs.
      So at first, life existed as single celled organisms that split in two, like bacteria and yeast still do today. But what happened then is the two-parents model of making new life – so DNA from two individuals was combined to make new ones. This very quickly made lots of new organisms, because of mixing of DNA from different individuals.

      So to come back to your question – first there would have been an animal that didn’t look like a chicken at all, and then with evolution, it would have started laying eggs.

      What do you think?

    • Photo: Amy Birch

      Amy Birch answered on 13 Jun 2012:

      Hi vikki,
      I agree with Sarah that eggs come first! This is because lots of other types of animals (not just birds) lay eggs, such as amphibians and reptiles. Both amphibians and reptiles are evolutionarily older than birds so would have been laying eggs first!
      Good question 🙂

    • Photo: Will Reynolds

      Will Reynolds answered on 13 Jun 2012:

      Scientifically I haven’t got a clue! But I have always thought that you must have to have an egg first to make a chicken at all! So im gonna go with that.

    • Photo: Karen Reed

      Karen Reed answered on 15 Jun 2012:

      Hiya vikki – Sarah’s got this one covered I think.

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