Yes, it was the Chicken.

[McRat]

Nobody knows why it crossed the road, however British scientists finally determined that indeed the Chicken-Came-Before-The-Egg:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/15/breaking-chicken-came-before-the-egg/

[tjwoosta]

This seems like common sense to me. Wouldn't the chicken need to keep the egg warm in order for it to hatch?

[lolzwut]

what? i dont even get it probably because i did not bother to read it anyway lolz

[theraje]

Actually, the chicken came before a lot of things. In fact, it is the ancestor of many species. That's why everything tastes like chicken.

Also, if God made the first chicken, this begs the question - does chicken taste like God? I suppose the answer could be considered ecumenical. A less ecumenical question: Does 2+2 really equal 4? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop? The world may never know.

Nonsensical babble over.

[Xianath]

The question has never been about avian eggs in particular. In that sense, egg predates chicken by several hundred million years. That said, my answer to this question has always been, "the rooster" :D

[TheNerdAL]

IF evolution is true, then the egg came before the chicken because dinosaurs evolved to chickens. :O

[kukker32]

i wonder why they want to waste their time sorting that things out...?

but BTW it's nice to know... *thumbs up*

[McRat]

what? i dont even get it probably because i did not bother to read it anyway lolz

There is an expression in English: "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

It refers to the difficulty determining a circular reference. Excel: Type "=B1" in cell A1, then type "=A1" in cell B1 to see a circular reference.

In any case, it HAD to have been the chicken. At some point, there was "almost a chicken" then was born the first chicken. The egg it came from was an "almost a chicken" egg.

The Rooster did not come first if he was a gentleman.

[chriswyatt]

But it still doesn't state what type of egg it is, it's a stupid question. If it does mean chicken egg which I'm guessing it does, maybe the egg came first, seeing as a chicken hatched from it so by definition it's a chicken egg? Also it depends whether the mutation happened in the egg or at conception.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_or_the_egg

So, I reckon the egg came first. According to the wiki DNA is only modified before birth, and it's the DNA which defines whether it's a chicken (again, assuming the question means chicken egg).

[V for Vincent]

But it still doesn't state what type of egg it is, it's a stupid question. If it does mean chicken egg which I'm guessing it does, maybe the egg came first, seeing as a chicken hatched from it so by definition it's a chicken egg?

Read it again. It does state that it's about chicken eggs specifically.

[gnomeuser]

Make the misinformation stop (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/chickens_eggs_this_is_no_way_t.php)

I swear the science reporting in the media today is below a standard I would expect from a common high school biology essay.

[koenn]

... (again, assuming the question means chicken egg).

update:

Seems like we didn't make it clear enough that these findings relate specifically to chicken eggs. We're well aware that dragons dinosaurs have plenty of prior art on chickens when it comes to laying shelled embryo chambers.

[chriswyatt]

Read it again. It does state that it's about chicken eggs specifically.

"What came first, the chicken or the egg?" It doesn't state what type of egg. I was thinking about the age-old question rather than the study.

[Lucifer The Dark]

Perhaps the Chicken used to give birth to live young like mammals then evolved to laying eggs instead, that way the Chicken would come before the egg.

[papangul]

Make the misinformation stop (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/chickens_eggs_this_is_no_way_t.php)

I swear the science reporting in the media today is below a standard I would expect from a common high school biology essay.
I like this comment from that page:

You don't have to know any biology to see that this entire question is a non-starter, based on the good old-fashioned notion of essentialism -- there is some magic sort of something that all species have, that make it what it is, and not some other species. A chicken is a chicken because it has the essential nature of a chicken. Richard Dawkins called this the "discontinuous mind," and Daniel Dennett pointed the fallacy out in his "First Mammal" problem. There are gradual degrees of change which can only be classified from an historical distance: no bird that was-not-a-chicken laid a chicken and ran away in terror at the new thing it had made. It laid a not-quite-a-chicken-either.

Presumably, the reader is supposed to think that the First Chicken did not hatch from an egg, but was lovingly crafted from chicken-stuff by the Hand of God, and then set forth and ordered to lay eggs hereafter, amen.
"Chicken" and "egg" refer to essentially the same thing, only the form is different. An egg is an unmanifested chicken and a chicken is a manifested egg.

[Jay_Bee]

Ok, so the new question is:
"What came first, egg-laying beings or the egg?" :popcorn:

Also in the relevant category:
http://www.qwantz.com/comics/comic2-1675.png

[jrothwell97]

MSNBC's story says...


The scientific and philosophical mystery was purportedly unraveled by researchers at Sheffield and Warwick universities, according to the Daily Mail newspaper.

I call nonsense. NEXT!

For the unenlightened, here's a selection of examples of how bad the Daily Mail is when it comes to science reporting: it has run headlines such as "Homeopathy Works", championed the MMR-autism scare, has said that Facebook gives you cancer, and geniunely managed to spin a paper on skin cancer to say that getting up at night to go to the lavatory increases the risk of cancer.

[YuiDaoren]

Make the misinformation stop (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/chickens_eggs_this_is_no_way_t.php)

I swear the science reporting in the media today is below a standard I would expect from a common high school biology essay.
This

[hhh]

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?

Three. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2xMGI-QpZw&feature=related)

[stuart.reinke]

Eggs are for breakfast. Chicken is for supper. Therefore the egg commes first at my house.

[donkyhotay]

My answer to this has always been "what do you believe?". If you believe in regular evolution then the answer would be the egg. Because at some point in the past an "almost-chicken" laid an egg out of which came a chicken. Even if the egg was different (i.e. stil soft shelled or something) it was technically a chicken egg because a chicken came out of it. If you believe in creation (to avoid possible religious discussion we'll assume "a wizard did it") then the chicken came first because gandalf pointed his finger, said "summonus dinnerus" and poof a chicken appeared.


//edit: little known fact not found in tolkien... The egg came later when gandalf started selling franchise rights to "gondoran fried chicken" and he needed a way for his non-wizard franchisees to make more chickens so he summoned roosters to go with his chickens for breeding purposes. He was always a little suspicious when shortly afterwards McGamgee's (which previously had offered nothing but beef sandwiches) starting offering a breakfast menu which included their new egg McFrodo sandwich, which quickly became a top seller for them.

[sgosnell]

This is the kind of thing you get when you have scientifically illiterate people writing for newspapers, or worse, completely unethical people doing the writing. Regardless of which sort wrote this crap, it's still crap. Egg-laying animals evolved long before chickens came along.

[tjwoosta]

Because at some point in the past an "almost-chicken" laid an egg out of which came a chicken. Even if the egg was different (i.e. stil soft shelled or something) it was technically a chicken egg because a chicken came out of it.

Or was it an almost-chicken egg because an almost-chicken laid it? ;)

[McRat]

Or was it an almost-chicken egg because an almost-chicken laid it? ;)

Correct. The egg itself would be the same as any other almost-chicken egg, but the ovum would have a distorted chromosome.
A mutation alone isn't a species. It's only a species if it succeeds better than it's parent.

[koenn]

A mutation alone isn't a species. It's only a species if it succeeds better than it's parent.
It's only a species if it procreates and the mutation propagates to the descendants.
doing better than parents/ancestors is not required.