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Asked by mhizzle to Freya, Katy, Louise, Pamela on 15 Mar 2010 in Categories: Theories.
Question: What comes first, the chicken or the egg?
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Pamela Docherty answered on 15 Mar 2010:
I think that’s a philisophical question rather than a scientific one! Maybe Louise would know better than me, though!
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Katy Milne answered on 15 Mar 2010:
The egg. Chickens can’t have been around very long. Eggs have been around ages. Fish eggs, dinosaur eggs.
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Louise Pendry answered on 15 Mar 2010:
Yikes – cheers for that question!
The egg….
Animals evolve through changes in their DNA (genetic material). In most animals it works like this: DNA in a sperm and DNA in an ovum (popularly called an egg…) meet and combine to produce the first cell of a new animal. This is called a zygote. This cell then divides loads of times to produce the whole new animal.
New types of animals only happen through changes (called mutations) and/or different ways that the DNA combines when the sperm and the ovum meet. The first chicken was not the first animal to exist. Therefore, the chicken must have come into existence when the DNA of the chicken’s ancestors either mutated or combined in such a way as to produce the first chicken when the ovum and sperm combined.
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Freya Harrison answered on 16 Mar 2010:
On the dinosaur egg theme…
There was an amazing fossil in the news just a few weeks ago – 67 million years ago, a three-metre-long snake was about to start eating some dinonsaur eggs when it was killed (I guess it was hit by a landslide or something that covered it in mud) and the whole scene was fossilised – there is a cool interview clip here:
http://article.wn.com/view/2010/03/06/Snake_eating_dinosaur_eggs_fossils_found_in_India/
Comments
Louise commented on :
Cheers Pam – there’s me sweating over this question!!!! I think somebody owes me a pint and a bar of chocolate!
klbmark0704 commented on :
The egg came first. A animal must have mutated and made a new species
klburmama commented on :
some animal must have laid an egg and another animal came over and fertilzers the egg
klburmama commented on :
it must have been a doudle yoked egg a boy and a girl
klburmama commented on :
and then the chickens started
hayleybrooks1 commented on :
i thought the question was which came first the chicken or the egg
then the witch came first…….
but i think thats just an old wiccan joke
Louise commented on :
Hahaha – took me a while but I got the joke in the end. I am a bit slow today 🙁
Moderator - Sian commented on :
good joke hayley 🙂