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[Puzzlemaker]

So a chicken and an egg were laying in a bed together.  The egg was smoking a cigarette, and said, "Well now we know."

[myrkul]

I had chickens in my 31.18 fort. I did not have eggs until 31.19. Riddle solved.

[Zrk2]

A close relative to the chicken had an egg, however (becasue Evolution) the egg was slightly mutated from said ancestor, forming the chicken we know and (insert you preffered love/hate here).

Therefore the egg came first.

[Nikov]

Except chickens did not evolve, tey were selectively bred from jungle fowl. Birds which matched desired characteristics were isolated into breeding pairs, becoming the first generation of chickens.

[Max White]

Well what do we mean by first? You see, in my days before I lost my time tavel device is a rigged wager (And one day I shall get it back!) a good freind of mine had this crazy thought. She approched me with a chicken under one arm, and a ESD is the other, and proclaimed that we were going to settle this for all man kind, so under her orders we traveled back in time to before life on earth, and she placed the chicken on the ground, and proclaimed that the chicken did in fact come first! However, what she didn't take into account was the timeline slice theory, that shows us that although the chicken was first in that specific timeline, there was a timeline that came before that (From an outspide percpetive of corse) that involved no such events taking place.

So our first, or a higher first?

[malimbar04]

The re-examining of the discussion actually raised a point I don't know the answer to.

What develops the egg? If it's the equivalent of the placenta of the parent, as I think it is considering the eggs I eat are unfertilized, then the problem is solved. The jungle fowl laid a jungle-fowl style egg that had a chicken grown inside of it.
Whether the egg is decided to belong to the parent (who made all the materials of the egg) or the offspring (which ate and grew inside of the egg), is arbitrary semantics. Choose one, and there is your answer.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Except chickens did not evolve, they were selectively bred from jungle fowl. Birds which matched desired characteristics were isolated into breeding pairs, becoming the first generation of chickens.

That's still evolution, it's just evolution that was somewhat railroaded by humans.

In any case, my answer is egg, as the first thing that could qualify as a chicken egg would have by definition came before the chicken itself formed and hatched from that egg.

[Criptfeind]

Except chickens did not evolve, they were selectively bred from jungle fowl. Birds which matched desired characteristics were isolated into breeding pairs, becoming the first generation of chickens.

That's still evolution, it's just evolution that was somewhat railroaded by humans.

In any case, my answer is egg, as the first thing that could qualify as a chicken egg would have by definition came before the chicken itself formed and hatched from that egg.

Aye, I was a like mind to you myself, but he does bring up a interesting point. Blur the line between chickens and jungle fowl enough does it not just become a matter of domestication? At some point it changed from captured birds to raised birds, but who says that the split between parent and child was so clean?

I believe this debate goes to free will, if there is no free will and the first chicken was destined to become a chicken then indeed the egg came first. But! But if there is free will and we can indeed change the course of fate, then would the first chicken indeed be the first fowl to 'decide' on whatever rudimentary level chickens think on to become domesticated. Thus at one point it was not a chicken, and then it was.

[Earthquake Damage]

Wait.  So animals choose to become domesticated?  I am confuse.

[Thundercraft]

Here's the thing. Before Chickens were Chickens, they were Red Junglefowl. Possibly hybridized with Grey Junglefowl. Chickens and Junglefowl are extremely similar and can interbreed. So, perhaps it can be argued that the first Chicken was merely a newly domesticated Junglefowl which was bestowed with a new name?

In which case, that Chicken would have preceded the first Chicken egg.

Now that I think about it more, I may have to agree with DJ and Levi that it all boils down to semantics. A duck is a duck is a duck. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... it's a duck. So if it looks like a chicken and clucks like a chicken... (But then, by that reasoning, wouldn't the modern Red and Grey Junglefowl also be classified as just alternate names for varieties of "chicken"?)

On the other hand, I'm thinking DeKaFu may have a point in that a Junglefowl may have become the first chicken by being domesticated. But I may be saying that for a reason which DeKaFu did not consider.

Scientists theorize that the domesticated dog originated several thousands of years ago (about the time of the last Ice Age) from wild canines (wolves or similar) which fed on refuse left by humans. Being wild, they had a natural fear and mistrust of humans and that included a fear of the smell of humans. But some of them could overcome their fear enough to dig through the human refuse piles and eat. Eventually, humans approached these wild dogs and started to interact with and domesticate them.

But the surprising thing is that scientists claim this change from wolf to domestic dog occurred very, very rapidly - merely a few generations.

How is that possible, you may ask? After all, a change in genetics that results in a new species requires millions of years, does it not?

Well... recently, scientists uncovered another mechanism by which a species can change drastically in a mere generation or two. It's called "epigenetics" and it has to do with how, under certain environmental or stress factors, the expression of certain genes are turned on or off like a light switch. Another words, parts of actively used DNA make become dormant and parts which may ordinarily be dormant become expressed (used).

I remember hearing about some experiments by a Russian scientist in the breeding of foxes in captivity. The surprising thing is that in just a few generations the foxes started to resemble common dogs. They had variations in fur color and floppy ears. They even barked like dogs! The theory is that selectively breeding the animals with less adrenaline and other stress factors changes gene expression through epigenetics.

So... I'm thinking that the mere act of domesticating the Junglefowl may have caused some physical changes in the immediate offspring via epigenetics - even though these "chickens" shared identical DNA with Junglefowl. If that's the case, the physical differences that separate Junglefowl from Chickens may have been noticeable in even one newly hatched clutch of Junglefowl eggs. Of course, that's just a theory...

[Gearskull1]

This issue comes down to what do you mean by the word chicken and egg. how do we define what a chicken is? are we taking a chicken and a chicken egg to be the biologicial definition of the word? The thing that we eat, and McDonald's mistreats. if so, is that the right way to look at this issue? If we define the chicken as what we think of when we hear the word, and the egg by the same meaning, then the egg came first. Because proto-humans and humans had an understanding of eggs before they understood chickens as we know them today.

Perhaps chicken is really a state of mind.

[PTTG??]

Except chickens did not evolve, they were selectively bred from jungle fowl. Birds which matched desired characteristics were isolated into breeding pairs, becoming the first generation of chickens.

That's still evolution, it's just evolution that was somewhat railroaded by humans.

In any case, my answer is egg, as the first thing that could qualify as a chicken egg would have by definition came before the chicken itself formed and hatched from that egg.

This is my intuitive answer as well, but I must point out that this is only the case under a few conditions, the first of which is that we define an egg by what it contains, and not its source. There is legitimacy with in both cases; a duck lays a duck egg, quail lays a quail egg, an alligator lays an alligator egg, an ostrich lays an ostrich egg, an otter lays an otter egg, a robin lays a robin egg, and carp lay carp eggs. Not only that, but the egg does not hatch into a chicken, it hatches into a chick (duckling, quail chick, alligator fry, ostrich chick...). By that standard, an egg produced by a chicken can't appear without a chicken to lay it, and so obviously, the chicken came first, hatching from am egg laid by a proto-chicken (a proto-chicken egg).

[Thundercraft]

There is legitimacy with in both cases; a duck lays a duck egg, quail lays a quail egg, an alligator lays an alligator egg, an ostrich lays an ostrich egg, an otter lays an otter egg...

Umm... You must be confused. Otters do not lay eggs. There are only five mammal species that lays eggs, belonging to the order Monotremata. Of these, the most well known is the platypus.

By that standard, an egg produced by a chicken can't appear without a chicken to lay it, and so obviously, the chicken came first, hatching from am egg laid by a proto-chicken (a proto-chicken egg).

You just stated a logical fallacy - you contradicted yourself. First, you said that "a chicken can't appear without a chicken to lay it" and then you said that the first chicken was hatched "from am egg laid by a proto-chicken". See the problem?

Anyway, semantics aside, I've already presented reasoning (which has yet to be commented on) why chickens (or "chicks" as the immature offspring are called in the English language) could be born from "proto-chickens" or Junglefowl in just one generation. (Perhaps it could require two or three generations, etc... but you get the idea.)

There may well have been enough difference in appearance and physical characteristics to distinguish them immediately from their wild or pseudo-domesticated parents. Unfortunately, since there were not any scientists or media present to document the historic event...

...history may never know.

On the other hand, we could settle the argument easily by saying the first chicken came about the instant mankind invented the name "chicken." In that case, there was never a single first chicken because they all became first chickens simultaneously.

[PTTG??]

Sorry, I meant to write "a chicken egg can't appear without a chicken to lay it". My point was that, while I don't think so myself, it is possible that the chicken came first if you refer to an egg by it's origin rather than it's contents.

As for otters, of course you're right. Otters are not egg-laying mammals. They are technically alge. Sorry for any confusion.

[eerr]

Proto chicken?

Chicken lord?

delicious bacon?