Which Came First- Chicken Or Egg? I Argue, The Egg

[dairygirl4u2c]

here is a debate i'm having at a site elsewhere than here. thought i'd post it here to see if there are any insights that can be garnered.

 

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answer: the egg.

the lithmus test for whether the chicken or egg came first, should be a defined list of DNA being met.

science is inexact in listing what constitutes a species. if the animal meets criteria like two wings a beak two chicken legs etc, then it is a chicken. the problem is that this is an inexact science. it is sufficient for everyday use, sure. but a line has to be drawn. how do we draw it? the only way is to make a criteria in DNA and stick to it.

we run into a problem similar to someone trying to sell something. a man wants to sell his 57 chevy for ten thousand. would be take a penny less? sure. two pennies? you see where i'm going with this. the man must set a limit. 9500 and not a penny less? so someone were to offer him a penny less and he does take it, is it really a firm limit? in practice, the man might take it, but we all know a point must be drawn.

in practice, scientists might take a nucleotide or piece of DNA less, but a point must be drawn.

what constitutes a chicken then will have a firm limit. in the line of chicken like animals before a chicken, there will be close calls no doubt. but it will be one animal that will evetually fill the criteria, meet the DNA match's minimum. and that animal will be first an egg, which hatches into the chicken that meets the match.

practically, the parents of the chicken might be called chickens in everyday use, but a line indeed must be drawn, so they technically are not chickens.

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my opponent will most likely offer no reason why we shouldn't be able to define what DNA is required to be a chicken, and have a cut off point. if we do this cut off point, the parents would not be chickens.

my opponent will likely argue that because the chicken can mate with its parents or are much like them, that we should be able to call its parents chickens too.

but we have to have that cut off in DNA and have cut off with parents, even if they are very similar. cause in fact, it's not even necessarily arbitrary.
if we have a regression for what are clearly chickens, and what are clearly not chickens but are ancesters.... eventually you will find some that cannot mate, a true hallmark for speciation.
for example. x is not chicken. y is a chicken. they cannot mate. y's parents cannot mate with X's offspring. if you keep going back in time with the chicken, and forward in time with the non chicken, eventually you will get to a point where they can in fact mate. this is around the cutoff for chickens. once we get to the point that they can mate, we have to step back a generation to the point they can't mate. and then we would map their DNA. this would be a highly complex project, finding those who can mate and those who can't. and in some ways it'd be impossible since ansesters of chickens are extinct. but, we know in principle this point exists. that theoretical point is the DNA cut off point. the first chicken would be the first in that train wreck of possible mating that can't mate with its acestorial counterparts.

there would surely have to be a point where the offspring couldn't mate with teh ancester, but the parents could. it has to happen at some point. and it might not be exact in practice.... the offspring might not be able to mate usually, but at certain attempts could, and or its offspring might be able to but the parent cant, cause there is a lot of variability with being able to mate or not, gentetically and in practice. but there is a certain theoretical point where it's not possible to mate. and this is a species that comes first as an egg.

perhaps we could make note of the fact that the parent is so similar to its offspring, that we could call them chicken hybrids. this is because we'd have a line of non chicken ancesters with a line of chicken lineage.... and a lot of cross over.

[chrysostom]

[Fidei Defensor]

I would say the chicken came first. But I would argue that a "chicken" exists in so much as any member of its lineage existed, all the way down the evolutionary tree and eventually it came to reproduce via an egg, whether or not it was a "chicken" as we know it today.

[dairygirl4u2c]

well, there is something to be said about the first species that could lay eggs. i would suppose it was a gradual process? it's hard to wrap one's mind around that, evolving into laying eggs. that species or those species wouldn't be 'chickens' proper, but they would be the first to start laying eggs. if you approached it this way, whichout regard to them actually not being chickens, then it might be better to say the chicken came first, at least metaphorically.

[Credo in Deum]

You heretics! The Bacon came first!

Edited June 26, 2014 by Credo in Deum

[Fidei Defensor]

well, there is something to be said about the first species that could lay eggs. i would suppose it was a gradual process? it's hard to wrap one's mind around that, evolving into laying eggs. that species or those species wouldn't be 'chickens' proper, but they would be the first to start laying eggs. if you approached it this way, whichout regard to them actually not being chickens, then it might be better to say the chicken came first, at least metaphorically.

That's essentially how I view it. I can understand your point, though, if you use a strict definition of "chicken," then the egg must have come before it and produced what we now call "chicken."

 

But as you said, I generally view the genetic lineage as part of "chicken" and so to me, they came first and then eventually came into egg laying as the product of their sexual reproduction.

 

Now, if you look at it as whether ANY egg came first, I would always argue that no, it did not. It was a development that required an extant organism to exist first, and must necessarily, then, come second. But thats a whole different conversation!

[Not The Philosopher]

You heretics! The Bacon came first!

 

I imagined you saying this as Frank Grimes, thanks to your avatar.