Which came first...the chicken or the egg?

The chicken evolved from other egg-laying species. Ergo, egg egg egg egg egg.

Such a stupid question.

hahaha I just had a moment of clarity that led me to edwardo and emil.y's correct conclusion - this is such a dumb question

dan perry otm

ok LJ, which came first, the chicken or the chicken's egg?

First was the egg. The omelette followed hard behind.

the chicken obv

ok

glad you're certain

boring semantic argument anyway

yeah it is, I just had a bleary moment of clarity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixgf5SlvOB4

This was a favorite of mine as a young, young child.

Holy shit I just came here to post the exact same thing u bastard.

"When you see one egg or t'other, do you ever thinkabout its mother"

LOL youtube:

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ClantonBrothers
1 week ago

@CanadaFamilyMan It was a song to call into question the existence of God, something which Satan has been doing since he was in the Garden of Eden. Sesame Street has always been a communist tool that is used with subtle cleverness. Way worse now than when I was a kid watching it. I would never expose my children to their commie garbage.

Since eggs (e.g. dinosaur eggs) obviously came before chickens the question is, as I noted above, really asking which came first: the chicken or the chicken egg? And when I said "boring semantic argument anyway" my thinking was this: since the chicken evolved from a non-chicken, let's draw an arbitrary line in chicken evolution and say that one day a non-chicken laid an egg out of which hatched a chicken. Then the answer depends on how you define chicken egg: does an egg belong to that which lays it or that which hatches from it? I thought this was an arbitrary judgement, hence boring semantic argument. However my thinking about eggs was superficial. An egg isn't just a shell, a vehicle for a baby chicken, it's the whole package that becomes a chicken - in fact, since you can meaningfully say a chicken was once a (fertilised) egg (as was any animal on the planet) in that sense the egg *is* the chicken. But if the egg is the chicken, how does that answer the question? Well I think we should answer the question as it is posed in natural language, where 'egg' refers to a small hard egg shaped thing and 'chicken' refers to a thing with wings and feathers and a beak. In that sense the egg and the chicken are different entities, but the egg is clearly a chicken egg since it will become a chicken. Hence the answer is the egg.

I remember figuring out that exact logic in my teenage years and being very pleased with myself. I realised later that the only correct answer is a non-answer and that by even attempting to answer it, you've got it wrong.

Thanks for the vote of confidence!

The question implies that the answer explains the continuing cycle of chickens hatching from eggs and laying new eggs. But there won't be a chick in the egg if there's no cock (or rooster, if you will) in play. As the question does not ask 'which came first, the chicken & the rooster, or the egg' the ONLY way to anwer the question with an explanation of the continuous cycle is:

Two eggs. A chicken hatched from the one, a rooster from the other.

I always assumed by "chicken", the question meant the species rather than the female of the species. Your answer is certainly true for the latter definition but I'm not sure it's true for the former.

I remember George Clinton’s answer in an old interview. Best answer I’ve heard: “It depends on who got laid first!”