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Which came first--the chicken or the egg?
The egg came first! Here's why: A nonchicken can lay a chicken egg, but a chicken egg can't hatch into a nonchicken.
A creature that is genetically very, very close to being a chicken, but not quite there--and don't ask me where one would
draw the genetic line between chicken and nonchicken; let's just imagine that the line has been drawn--may conceive a
zygote whose DNA has been mutated just enough that the zygote will develop into a chicken egg and thence into a
chicken. So, a nonchicken can lay a chicken egg.
But although one can imagine a nonchicken zygote being conceived and only then having its DNA mutate into
chicken DNA, so that a nonchicken ovum could develop into a chicken, I take it that the "egg" of the question is
supposed to be a laid egg, not merely an ovum, and the ovum has divided into several thousand cells by the time a
chicken egg is laid; a mutation occurring after the egg's laying would somehow have to affect each of the thousands of
cells, the odds against which seem awfully long. A chicken egg will, therefore, hatch as a chicken rather than as a
nonchicken.
Therefore, the egg came first.
(© 2007 by Keith Brian Johnson)
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