Thread: Scientist figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg.

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    Registered User hk_mp5kpdw's Avatar
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    Scientist figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg.

    "Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods."
    -Christopher Hitchens

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    Programming Wraith GReaper's Avatar
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    I disagree! I strongly believe that the egg came first!
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    and the hat of int overfl Salem's Avatar
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    The protein speeds up the development of the hard shell, which is essential in protecting the delicate yolk and fluids while the chick grows inside the egg, the report said.
    Long before there were hard shells, there were soft shells, and before that, no shells at all.

    Eggs which created chickens capable of producing this protein had a better chance of making more eggs. The protein might only be found in chickens, but the DNA coding to produce it first had to come from an egg.

    A chicken is just an egg's way of making another egg.
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    There's got to be more to it than what was in that article, because that is some extremely unconvincing logic they provided.

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    Programming Wraith GReaper's Avatar
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    And that because the mutated, today, chicken was surely come out of an EGG, right? The mutation may have taken part in the ansestor's body, but the new egg produced the new chicken.
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    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    The protein might only be found in chickens, but the DNA coding to produce it first had to come from an egg.

    A chicken is just an egg's way of making another egg.
    This.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sipher View Post
    And that because the mutated, today, chicken was surely come out of an EGG, right? The mutation may have taken part in the ansestor's body, but the new egg produced the new chicken.
    And this.

    I couldn't agree more. The news is obviously another clear example of online (and often offline) press. And not really because I disagree with it (that's another matter altogether), but because: "Who are these scientists? How did they reach this conclusion?". It's sad, and personally offensive, that news like this are becoming so pervasive.

    The correct answer is the egg. And this because mutation happens inside the egg, not inside the chicken body when it hatches. So, something almost-but-not-quite-yet-a-chicken one day produced a follicle. That follicle (essentially the yolk) travels through the chicken oviduct where the white is formed and is eventually expelled to the outside. During this process the DNA inside the yolk mutated and was ready to hatch the first chicken. So one day there was no chickens, just almost-chickens, and someday a chicken was born from an egg.

    Mutation happens in the egg and during fetus formation (as it does with mammals). The egg thus came first.

    EDIT: One correction though. An ad in the middle of the text made me think I had reached the end of the news article. But after that it is said who are the scientists and how they reached this conclusion. So I stand corrected in that the news article is well constructed. It's however ironic... because the study clears indicates that it is the egg the first thing. Not the chicken.
    Last edited by Mario F.; 07-14-2010 at 02:53 PM.
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    Devil's Advocate SlyMaelstrom's Avatar
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    This topic should read "Once again current generations try desperately to convince themselves that they're more important than previous generations"

    ... because that's certainly how future generations are going to perceive this.
    Last edited by SlyMaelstrom; 07-14-2010 at 04:26 PM.
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    In my head happyclown's Avatar
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    Now they just need to figure out if the glass is half empty, or half full.
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    and the hat of int overfl Salem's Avatar
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    > Now they just need to figure out if the glass is half empty, or half full.
    Nah, that one's easy
    The glass is simply twice as big as it needs to be (bit like governments).
    If you dance barefoot on the broken glass of undefined behaviour, you've got to expect the occasional cut.
    If at first you don't succeed, try writing your phone number on the exam paper.

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    Registered User C_ntua's Avatar
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    Well, if you think that the chicken evolved from something else, then wouldn't it technically depend if that something else made eggs or not? If it made egg then the chicken came from an egg. If not they it didn't come from an egg.
    Maybe the first chickens didn't make eggs but at one point they did.

    The real question is if there was generally an egg before there was a living form that could make eggs. The chicken is more like an example.

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    Lurking whiteflags's Avatar
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    You would have to go pretty far, I would imagine, down the chicken's ancestry to get to a point where shelled eggs were not part of the reproductive process. We might be talking primordial soup old. I think it's more likely that the egg came first, because ancient chickens gave birth to the first chicken eggs around the same time they evolved into sexual reproduction - but the parents of the mutated egg were not exactly chickens.

    Of course, I've done zero research....

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    Devil's Advocate SlyMaelstrom's Avatar
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    I don't know how there is any debate about this, at all... the expression is not meant to be answered. It's supposed to be a rhetorical question to make you wonder when you could really call a chicken a chicken. Let's say chickens evolved from a non-external egg bearing species... clearly at some point there was an ancestor of modern chickens that was born outside of an egg, grew up, and laid an egg... now the only question is whether or not you would consider the creature that laid the egg to be the first chicken or whether you'd consider the animal that came out of that egg to be the first chicken. It's all entirely subjective and the reality of it is that whatever laid that first external egg probably looked, acted, and genetically compared very little to modern chickens as we know it.

    As most everyone agrees here, this is not science, this is media mumbo-jumbo... a feel-good "pat yourselves on the back, world" type of story so that everyone doesn't just kill themselves because they feel like their species is insignificant.
    Last edited by SlyMaelstrom; 07-15-2010 at 02:06 PM.
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    Registered User hk_mp5kpdw's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by whiteflags View Post
    but the parents of the mutated egg were not exactly chickens.
    My view is that the egg is not a chicken egg but the egg of the parent species (whatever you want to call that species). The parent species egg just happens to have a chicken in it instead of another member of said parent species. The egg is not mutated, its what's inside that is (probably call it evolved versus mutated).

    But that's just my thought.
    "Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods."
    -Christopher Hitchens

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    Lurking whiteflags's Avatar
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    a feel-good "pat yourselves on the back, world" type of story so that everyone doesn't just kill themselves because they feel like their species is insignificant.
    I agree. Though I can think of better projects for scientists: invisibility cloaks, handheld portal devices, etc. It makes me sad that scientists are bored.

    But that's just my thought.
    Well I... am getting slightly confused. I'm sure that we all have a good enough understanding of evolution to know it works through mutation. So when I say the egg is mutated, of course it evolved. We're all saying the same thing, right?
    Last edited by whiteflags; 07-15-2010 at 02:13 PM.

  15. #15
    Cat without Hat CornedBee's Avatar
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    For what it's worth, hard-shelled eggs are one of the things that distinguish reptiles from amphibians, so the hard-shelled egg existed a long time before the first proto-bird evolved.
    All the buzzt!
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