Breakfast before dinner, ergo eggs before chicken.

After long and deep research, I can say definitively, the EGG has it:

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use List::Util qw[ shuffle ];

my $string = join '', shuffle +('A' .. 'Z')x2;;

while( $string = join'', shuffle split '', $string ) {
    printf( STDERR "\r$string" );
    $string =~ s[(CHICKEN|EGG)][>>>$1<<<]
        and die "\n\n$1 came first\n$string\n\n(Selfish lover?)\n";
}

__END__
C:\test>junk1
OEQOLHRDFUWDXPTZBYVLTNWKFBVJSRMAEGGNUQIAXCSZCKIHJPMY

EGG came first
OEQOLHRDFUWDXPTZBYVLTNWKFBVJSRMA>>>EGG<<<NUQIAXCSZCKIHJPMY

(Selfish lover?)

C:\test>junk1
MWZCSLUKEATQYTHOWEGGMVPQYVRRJXBUAKXNDDHFPZJISNOCFBLI

EGG came first
MWZCSLUKEATQYTHOW>>>EGG<<<MVPQYVRRJXBUAKXNDDHFPZJISNOCFBLI

(Selfish lover?)

C:\test>junk1
BZPUIEEGGONAQRWOJFKDHDYCXUFBLWZHYMMVXSISTTJAQKNPVRCL

EGG came first
BZPUIE>>>EGG<<<ONAQRWOJFKDHDYCXUFBLWZHYMMVXSISTTJAQKNPVRCL

(Selfish lover?)
[download]

Should it not be [scramble] rather than [shuffle]!

How about this proof?

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

my @creations = sort ('egg','chicken');
print "@creations\n";
__END__
[download]

Output: chicken egg

The real question is where did the rooster come from? I mean an egg will not produce a chicken, unless there is a rooster to fertilize it. So the original poll should be "chicken, egg, or rooster" ?

---

I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Cogito ergo sum a bum

No, no, no. That can't be right! You'd have to sort by date of birth not name for that to work.

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

There are parthenogenic vertebrates, such as Komodo dragons, and it has been reported for mice, chickens, and turkeys.

---

Information about American English usage here and here. Floating point issues? Please read this before posting. — emc

Some animal that could not be classified as a chicken was produced offspring via eggs. During sexual reproduction and random gene mutation, the animal that emerged from the egg is what we classify as a chicken.

The above theory is more plausible to me then the idea that chickens produced offspring by live birth and then evolved egg producing. On the other hand, it just delays the question to: Which came first - the animal(s) that gave birth to the chicken or the egg that created that animal(s).

For the record, I am a Christian with a non-traditional perspective.

Actually, that perspective is also quite traditional, though this is not a comfy factoid to those who are in the business of telling God how he should interpret Genesis 1.

<moment of sanity>

If I had to stake my life on it, I would agree with something like you said. My guess is that the predecessor of the chicken was some primitive ocean swimming creature that laid eggs to reproduce, like so many other sea creatures. One day, some of them crawled onto land, and their scales gradually modified into feathers( due to the incredible built-in metamorphorsizing abilities of the original gene that originated life (maybe fell in a comet? Maybe airborne O2 causes a different genetic reaction than water-bourne O2?). This became the chicken.

I'm always fascinated by the gene's ability to do what is necessary.... like if we (humans)were forced back into the sea, would we naturally just start getting webbed fingers and toes( ala Waterworld), without mutation? Just by the genes activating the "waterborn" subroutines, instead of the airborn ones

One of the basic tenets of Bhuddism, is that "conciousness is an intrinsic part of the cosmos". On a level we don't understand, I believe conciousness can control how our genes function.....turning things on/off as needed. This probably corresponds to the Christian "hidden-hand-of-God" branch of evolutionists.

</moment of sanity>

---

I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Cogito ergo sum a bum

I'm always fascinated by the gene's ability to do what is necessary.... like if we (humans)were forced back into the sea, would we naturally just start getting webbed fingers and toes( ala Waterworld), without mutation? Just by the genes activating the "waterborn" subroutines, instead of the airborn ones

A gene cannot alter its own behaviour. Rather, we humans (at least most of us!) just don't possess the gene which produces webbed feet. Or, they are inactive. So say we are forced back into the sea, many of us are going to die and thus our genes. The gene responsible for webbed feet will slowly rise in numbers in the gene population thus giving us webbed feet! What I'm hoping to say is that some percentage of humans would be possessing the inactive gene for webbed feet and their offspring will be the ones who survive.

--
Rohan

My guess is that the predecessor of the chicken was some primitive ocean swimming creature that laid eggs to reproduce, like so many other sea creatures.

According to the latest scientific knowledge, the direct ancestor of the chicken was more likely T-Rex!

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

One of the basic tenets of Bhuddism, is that "conciousness is an intrinsic part of the cosmos". On a level we don't understand, I believe conciousness can control how our genes function.....turning things on/off as needed.

Trying to refrain from all the jokes about ....conciousness controlling...how our 'jeans' function....turning things on/off -from back in high school...

I'd propose that when the Creator made "All the beasts of the field", then this would suggest that the chicken was created first, & the egg is meerly the means but which they can sustain the species.

<harold_and_kumar character="President Bush">you just blew my f*cking mind.</harold_and_kumar>
meh.

I thought about the same, but got confused when thinking about sexual reproduction (having been a teen male once, you can understand how sex might confuse me).

A female ${animal that came before a chicken} produces a mutant egg which can be said to be a half-chicken. Did that egg count as a chicken egg? Where's the father who fertilizes that egg? Is the first chicken a half-breed and thus not a full chicken? What kind of eggs did that animal produce? After how much mixing did the half-breeds produce a mother with a chicken-egg and a father with his contribution also 100% chicken?

Regardless, after about 30 sec, I came to the same conclusion. The chicken-eggs (and other stuff) were being produced long before the first chicken.

---

#my sig used to say 'I humbly seek wisdom. '. Now it says:
use strict;
use warnings;
I humbly seek wisdom.

A female ${animal that came before a chicken} produces a mutant egg which can be said to be a half-chicken. Did that egg count as a chicken egg?

This is a fairly interesting question by itself, but I would offer two objections with regard to the original question:

1. Any egg that would produce something that would be considered a chicken is still an egg.

2. The OP doesn't stipulate any kind of egg, and we can probably safely assume that any direct ancestor(s) to a chicken also reproduced by laying eggs.

"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

OK, I'll bite: The ancestors of chickens also laid eggs (whatever they were). So the answer must be Egg.

I'm a well trained Catholic altar boy. :-)

As a Catholic, you should know that there was no death before the fall. Adam and Eve were vegetarians. Meat wasn't given as food until the time of Noah. So Biblically the chicken definitely came first.

Of course, that's assuming we're talking about the first chicken ever versus the first (chicken) egg ever. The question doesn't actually say that, however, and there are other ways in which it might be reasonably interpreted. (Unless there is some additional information of which I am not aware in the context surrounding the original question. But if so, the poll did not supply that information.)

If we're talking about any random chicken one might happen to encounter, and the corresponding egg out of which it hatched, then that complicates things. Then you have to look at things like whether the chicken is a chicken before the egg is fertilized, and what constitutes an "egg" anyway (does it have to have a hard shell yet, or will a couple of cells do), and so forth.

-- 
We're working on a six-year set of freely redistributable Vacation Bible School materials.

Which came first: The chicken or the egg?

Which came first: The chicken or the chicken egg?

"This first is obvious the second is less obvious, but completely semantic."

Care to elaborate on the obvious.

There were dinosaur eggs long before there were chickens...

Don't forget that eggs can also exist without a chicken "outside" - turtles lay eggs too.
"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

As a good Catholic, I don't have to literally interpret Genesis¹, nor do I have to honor Bishop Ussher's timeline. Fish and invertebrates lay eggs, and the evidence shows that they predate chickens. So, eggs first.

¹ Look here, here, or here.

As a good Catholic, I don't have to literally interpret Genesis

One of the few things I like about catholicism*. Anyway, I want to thank you for showing that just because you're religious doesn't mean you're not allowed to think logically. I'm not being sarcastic either: for some reason that's something I don't see much on the internet these days. Though that may be because many of the sites I frequent have a high percentage of American visitors**.

* For the record: I'm an atheist, and not particularly in favour of religions in general.

** And I'm Dutch. No disrespect meant to Americans, but the US seems to be one of the most fundamentally religious countries in the western world.

"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

In respect to the american comment above, there is rarely definitive secular behavior worthy of sensationalist news. It is sort of like thinking americans must be violent jerks because that's what makes the paper. Lastly, there is a geographical slant to this sort of thing, too.

I'd say that America isn't as you see it, but our media only likes to report on extremes so that's what we look like.

First prize is a Spermatozoon

It seems that many people have have pontificated about Chickens and Eggs for many years

hypothesis 1 hypothesis 2 or perhaps hypothesis 3 some famous and not so famous answers

Perhaps it will never be solved.

My personal choice would depend on which was the Beta version!

The chicken or the egg. Hmmmm....

Well, I suppose we're talking about the Platonic ideal of chicken and egg, since by "the chicken" and "the egg" we are presumably not referring to some specific chicken and egg. And the Platonic ideals of these things must both have existed at the beginning of time. Or, perhaps more accurately, they both exist outside of space-time, and hence the question of which came first is not relevant.

I was going to say something like that.... the chicken and egg are the same thing, just taking different form at different times.... so it was created....... and that is the end of discussion.

---

I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Cogito ergo sum a bum

I thought we were referring to some specific chicken and egg, actually. Specifically the first chicken and the first egg.

Birds and chickens can trace their evolutionary history back through dinosaurs.

Therefore the answer is:
C: The dinosaurs.

If you don't believe me, then check out the journal science.

Dino DNA

To be fully correct here...The real answer is E: none of the above, b/c ultimately "something" came before the dino's and before them...and so on.

Species are artificial constructs placed onto a continuous process that is evolution. A species is, and is not all at once, b/c it is constantly on one evolutionary trajectory or another. We as humans have placed these constructs onto our world, b/c we as scientists/botanists/gardeners/hunters/people need to see the world as structured.

I apologize for making the creationists among us squeamish here; however, I have my beliefs as do you, and do not judge based on one view or another.

-Bio.

YolkFoo

Being a creationist, I would have to say that the chicken came first, because God didn't start making babies until he had adults to look after them. :)

The vast majority of animal parents provide absolutely no care of offspring. Indeed, many will quite cheerfully eat infants of their species.

---

Information about American English usage here and here. Floating point issues? Please read this before posting. — emc

Cheers,

JohnGG

no, it's not. Also: Re^3: Which came first?
"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

In the "chicken - egg" question, it is clear that the egg is a chicken egg; and you can apply that concept to any other egging creature, to wit: "which came first, the turtle or the egg?", etc - same question, same answer.

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

Life started at our universe in a simple way and evolved on...so it's normal to think that the egg should be before the chicken.

Dinosaurs existed before the first chicken and they came from the egg too...

Okay, I'll bite.

(Let me just put on my helmet here...)

Are there really creationists on perlmonks?

Yes. I am a creationist. Still, believing in creation does not preclude the possibility that what was first created were more generic bird(s) and not the chicken as we know it today. If dogs, cats, horses, and squirrels can specialize to an environment, either naturally or through the intervention of humans, why could not birds specialize also, resulting in the variations of birds and chickens we currently have?

But, even with specialization/mutation over time being a given, that does not answer the chicken vs (chicken) egg issue. However, that question is similar to this: which came first, the thoroughbred horse or the thoroughbred horse foal? I propose that until there is a sufficient quantity of the latter growing to maturity, the former cannot be categorized. So, applying this to the chicken/egg issue, until enough eggs hatched which grew to produce the combination of characteristics we now label as chicken (instead of junglefowl), there were more of the former than the latter.

Summary points:

• The egg with the specific set of genetic characteristics preceded the grown set of birds which received the (new) label for that specific set of genetic charactistics.
• If only one of something is present, it is a mutation and not yet a species/genus variation.
• Unless there are a sufficient number of the mutation and that mutation can reproduce, it is not yet a species/genus variation.
• The specialized offspring exists first, though without the label for that specialization.

Update: Added last bullet point for clarification.

pileofrogs,
Um - yeah.

Cheers - L~R

I can even give you a timeline. The chicken came first. Then, about 9 months later, ...

Okay, so I know it's not 9 months for chickens but go with me, here...

The chicken can eat, whereas the egg cannot. Thus, if a very small chicken (much smaller than what hatches from eggs normally) appears accidentally, it can survive and grow to a large chicken by eating food around it. Whereas, if a very small egg (much smaller than what chickens lay normally) appears accidentally, it just dies because it cannot eat and it doesn't have enough food in it. So I think the chicken was first and voted for it.

An egg eats itself, all you get is a smaller chicken

from an evolutionary 'historic' perspective the 'egg' (and sperm) preceded the cellular aggregates

Really? 'egg' and 'sperm' are rather specialized cell types, thus part of a 'cellular aggregate'...

So it seems to me that your exposition of evolution history is yet another shift of viewpoint (as dino/egg, turtle/egg, fish/egg, ...) containing the same problem:

Egg+Sperm<->Multicellular_Organisms
[download]

To solve the chicken/egg puzzle we first have to put both terms on the same level. "Chicken" is a specialized term, "Egg" is general, so establishing "firstness" of chicken and egg is like comparing apple and fruit.

So, let's just talk about 'chicken' and 'chicken egg'. There's the reasoning that the first chicken egg was laid by a creature which itself was not a chicken. Later, a chicken hatched from that egg.

But until the chicken hatched, the egg was not a chicken egg, but an ordinary non-chicken egg. The non-chicken egg became a chicken egg at the moment the chicken hatched from it, not before. If it already had been a chicken egg, because it contained a chicken, then the egg was formed as a container of the chicken, and the chicken was formed as content of it's chicken egg.

They both came into existence at the moment the chickenness of the chicken-egg's chicken and the chicken-eggness of the chicken's chicken-egg could clearly be established beyond doubt.

That's why chicken and egg are one, and there's no "first" in chicken nor egg...

Name them, and they are. In principio erat verbum.

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

update: sorry - double post (I must have doubleclicked the send btn. --- Post deleted.
allan

Well, I was commenting on egg+spermatozoa (oogamy) being an evolutionary ancient mechanisms for sexual reproduction traceable back to the protista (way before multicellular organisms, such as T.Rex or chickens).

This is a broad evolutionary angle on the egg/chicken question (which I find interesting),

All sexually reproducing organisms derive from a common ancestor which was a single celled eukaryotic species. Many protists reproduce sexually. . .

If the egg is not necessarily of any specific type: Then it could be said that the egg came first, because other animals had been laying eggs long before chickens existed. In biology, egg is used as a general term in this way.

A more narrow speciation angle (which seems to be what you are driving at) could argue that

The modern chicken was believed to have descended from another closely related species of birds, the red junglefowl, but recently discovered genetic evidence suggests that the modern domestic chicken is a hybrid descendant of both the red junglefowl and the grey junglefowl... Assuming the evidence bears out, a hybrid is a compelling scenario that the egg came before the chicken.

allan
(in the beginning was energy, evolving (given time and negative entropy) to egg, chicken -- and in the end : a lot of words... :)