LucidFlight wrote:The_Piper wrote:So there is no wrong answer, but if you're asking me it's the egg. Because even if the mutation was in the parent of the first chicken and not the first chicken itself, the first chicken's parent was born from an egg too.
Now, what about the egg the parent (aka "first chicken") came from? Was it a chicken egg or pre-chicken egg? Or am I thinking too much about this during my coffee break? Is the question asking about if a "chicken egg" came first or just any old egg? Because, if "first chicken" came from a pre-chicken, surely the egg itself would be of a pre-chicken; that is, "first chicken" came from a pre-chicken egg. So, to sum up: "first chicken" came from a pre-chicken egg, and then the
first chicken egg came from "first chicken". I'm so wired right now.
ETA
Just to be clear: in the above, highly-philosophical scenario, the chicken came first.
Sorry for the late reply, I had to do more research.
Just kidding, I didn't see your reply.
I disagree. I agree with the op that's there's probably no real first chicken, but if we had to pick one bird in the line of descendants, to finally put this question to rest, then that first chicken that we picked would have been born from an egg. Because the bird that we picked is a chicken, then the egg it was born from was a chicken egg, even if a non-chicken laid it. It was a chicken egg because it contained a future chicken. Next question. I guess I can pick one out of; "how many grains of sand in a pile" and "what came first the mammal or placenta". Hmm, I think during birth that the baby mammals pop out before the placenta does?
Piling grains for sand, hmm, theoretically, if we had very tiny robotic tools we could probably make a pile out of 5, depending on your definition of pile. It could take up to 117 medium=sized grains to satisfy the pickiest definitions.