This has always been a fascinating question to me:
(In regards to evolution)
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Now I have several thoughts on this but I will introduce the poll first and comment on what I think it is and why next week. Please make comments and discussion below.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
5 comments:
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The egg contained the mutation to make a chicken, therefore the egg.
ReplyDeleteEggs long predate chickens -- the ancestors of chickens laid eggs, and the ancestors of those ancestors laid eggs, etc., etc. ad infinitum. Evolution renders this question completely moot.
ReplyDeleteBut if you go back far enough those ancestors did not lay eggs. So I don't know if that can be a valid argument.
ReplyDeleteBut if you go back far enough those ancestors did not lay eggs. So I don't know if that can be a valid argument.
ReplyDeleteTrue, but one doesn't have to go back that far -- the immediate ancestors of chickens laid eggs: basal neornithians (e.g., ratites) do, as did more basal ornithuromorphs, ornithothoracians, paravians, etc. Egg-laying is plesiomorphic for birds, and synapomorphic at a recent-enough phylogenetic level that it's quite safe to say that the odds that the most immediate ancestors of chickens did not lay eggs are infinitesimal.
The question is like: "Which came first: the human or the uterus?"
Alright, I concede. I usually have problems differentiating the egg from the chicken. To produce a chicken the non-chicken parent must give birth to a chicken (theoretically speaking, I know that is not 100% correcty). And although I view it as a chicken within the egg, it probably is viewed as just an egg. Hence the egg coming first and not the chicken. That is where I am coming from.
ReplyDelete