depends how far you want to go back in evolutionary time, the first bilaterian,or eukaryote. it dint exist when they were microscopic.
this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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Were I to place a human ovum inside of a chicken and compel the fowl to expel it, would it then be a chicken egg? If I were to sign over my collection of specimen jars to a chicken, would they suddenly hold chicken embryos? Absolutely not. Chickens have not, nor will they ever own my human embryos, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop giving them ideas
Everybody has their price. Eventually we'll get those embryos!
-the chickens
This has always been my argument to this silly question.
Either at some point the last species before the chickens laid an egg and the first chicken crawled out of that egg, or... the chickens used to give birth to live babies but suddenly stopped that and started laying eggs for some reason, which feels far less likely.
Which came first: a chicken egg, or a chicken.
Is it a chicken egg because a chicken crawled out of it?
Is it a chicken egg because a chicken laid it?
Depending on how you interpret the question, it can be slightly more interesting.
Or if you're a young earth creationist, then god created the chicken wholesale at the time of all other creatures, therefore chickens were created before eggs.
It's not even an interpretation thing, that is what the question is actually asking. It's implicitly understood to be about chicken eggs
Yes, but is a chicken egg one that's laid by a chicken, or one that hatches the chicken? The answer to that question affects the answer to which came first
It's one that contains a chicken:
A chocolate egg is an egg that contains chocolate, not one that is laid by chocolate.
QED
Most eggs you buy in the store are unfertilized and therefore don't really contain chicken. They are still called chicken eggs. Therefore what lays the egg determines what it is called.
There was never any point where a non-chicken laid an egg that hatched into a chicken. Evolution doesn’t care about our categories, just as the rainbow doesn’t care about our colour words!
It's one that hatches a chicken. An egg layed by a chicken is a chicken*'s* egg. If a chicken doesn't come out of it, it ain't a chicken egg.
In the mitosis process of the proto-chicken a small change occurred that resulted in an chicken embryo in the egg. So the proto-chicken laid the first chicken egg.
I don't see any necessary interpretation. Is the question "Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?"? It's always been "the chicken or the egg" wherever I've seen it. Maybe the "chicken egg" is implied somehow?
Either way, my interpretation is this one, I suppose:
It is a chicken egg because a chicken crawled out of it.
😊
It's implied that the egg in question is the chicken egg. Otherwise the answer is trivially obvious to anyone. Obviously non-chicken eggs came before chickens. Why would that be an interesting philosophical thought?
But the answer is trivially obvious either way.
- "Chicken egg" meaning "egg laid by a chicken": laid by a chicken that came directly from a previous, ancestral species' egg...
- "Chicken egg" meaning "an egg containing a chicken": laid by that previous, ancestral species' egg. So one generation before the interpretation in 1).
Trivial. The only issue is your definition of "chicken egg", and the answer flips depending on that. Otherwise perfectly clear to me at least.
Tbh I'd answer the interpretation question with "both" anyway. If a chicken laid it, it's a chicken egg, and if a chicken crawls out it's also a chicken egg.
Like, if a chicken lays an egg it's a chicken egg, but then if a turtle crawls out of that egg it ceases being a chicken egg and becomes ~~an abomination and an affront against god~~ a turtle egg that happened to have been laid by a chicken in some odd turn of events.
but then if a turtle crawls out of that egg it ceases being a chicken egg and becomes
I don't think I support this definition. It's too loose. You can't have it both ways. It is what it is when it is formed. It doesn't change after it has been laid. It's genetically primed from the DNA of its parents. Not from what's going on inside the egg.
Either way, I personally don't subscribe to the whole "chicken egg" definition issue at all. An egg is just the shell. The important part is what's inside it. And either way, both definitions can be easily answered by evolution, so it's never a difficult question.
If the definition is of importance, just ask for that info, then answer accordingly. No big deal. 👍
If it's only defined by what is inside, then all eggs are schrodinger's eggs. They're both simultaneously a chicken and not a chicken until we observe the contents. You can't know what it is when it's formed if, as is postulated above, "at some point the chicken's predecessor laid an egg that became the chicken" is the truth, as at some point what laid the egg and the contents of the egg must differentiate even if slightly. Therefore all we can do is assume it is "what laid the egg" until "what comes out," comes out, and proves us either correct or incorrect.
I disagree with your premise one hundred percent.
The contents of the egg will be what it will be regardless of whether or not we observe it. If it will be another chicken, it will be another chicken. If it will be the next species by some definition, that's what it'll be. But this is not determined when it hatches. That's not how it works. It's determined when the embryo is formed, way before hatching.
So this premise of observing and so on is not something I can keep discussing, I feel. It's not relevant to the matter, because whatever comes out comes out regardless of our presence.
Feel me?
Sure, the contents "will be" what they "will be," but we technically can't know what they "will be" until they "are."
Until it hatches and "is" the best we can do is assume it "will be" what its parents "are," or our other option is to simply refer to it as "egg, species unknown" regardless of the egg's progenitors, which probably looks less appealing on the carton.
Would you please able to, with less than paragraph-long sentences, explain how this type of thinking helps us or creates a problem for us when answering the question? I'm really struggling to see the relevance of this (what feels like a) philosophical derailment. 🙏
I thought you were done with this conversation.
In any case, the answer to your question would appear to be "because that's the thread we've commented on. We chose this life." Sorry to interrupt your prayer.
Oh wow, you kinda turned a little bit passive aggressive here for no reason. Now we're definitely done. Happy new year, bud.
Or if you're a young earth creationist, then god created the chicken wholesale at the time of all other creatures, therefore chickens were created before eggs.
If I'm an omnipotent sky daddy I would not create all living beings as adults, instead I'll create a sample that closely resembles how it should be. That means creating chickens, chicks and even eggs. I'm the same manner, some mammals would exist as pregnant.
If there were no eggs, how egg eating animals would survive the first few weeks? What about seed eating animals?
Checkmate Atheists
Or if you’re a young earth creationist, then god created the chicken wholesale
Did God create a chicken wholesale or did God create an egg that hatched into a chicken?
(God isn't really, yadda yadda, but that's not a fun answer)
In my understanding this question is about the fundamentals of development of life in general, not specifically chicken. But yes, it seems rather trivial to anybody with sufficient education at our current state of scientific progress. Your former option applies specifically to chicken, and the latter applies to life in general, if we assume that division qualifies as giving birth to live babies.
It definitely is a matter of the fundamentals of development of life and evolution, and the answer follows evolution, which explains it perfectly IMO, within a certain degree of miraculous uncertainty. 😅 Maybe chickens are aliens.
This is a dumb question. The answer is the Egg, because that's how evolution works. Mutations happen in the egg, not after their born like Ninja Turtles. It went Proto Chicken,>Egg>Chicken.
Not even necessarily "proto-chicken", the definition of species is operational and breaks down at this level. It's like asking "how strong is this wind?" with a single air molecule. For species, the proto-chicken and the chicken separated by a single generation would be able to reproduce just fine, you need to pick further points to discern
I mean, I'm way oversimplifying, but that is the general idea of evolution. But yes it's far more gradual than one bird giving birth to a full modern chicken.
I'm way oversimplifying, but that is the general idea of evolution.
It isn't, but that wasn't my point either way. I'm emphasizing that this gradation you see (the "far more gradual" you wrote) actually applies constantly to the whole lineage, at any two points, unless they're very apart from each other, which means that "species" as a definition can't work when comparing generations that are too close together.
It's a language question, as you're asking that we define whether a (Chicken) Egg is an egg laid by a chicken or an egg that hatches into a chicken.
uh, mutations do happen after they are born (i've been irradiated a few times i'm sure i've got one or two). they just have to be in the gametes to be evolutionarily important.
Eggs already existed here
Been saying that for ages.
But then [as the op points out] the question re-arises when asking "Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?" The first chicken would have been in an egg... do we call that egg a chicken egg? Is the egg defined by who laid it rather than what's in it?
- If the latter [what's in it?], which forms first? The chicken, or the egg around it? The egg.
- If the former [who laid it?], the chicken came before the chicken egg, that first chicken being in an egg named after whatever non-chicken laid it.
So which is the proper definition? I'm leaning to who laid it. The first chicken came out of a non-chicken egg. The chicken came first. And then went on to lay the first chicken egg.
And when exactly do we consider it to be a chicken?
That depends on how you define chicken egg. The egg that hatched to a chicken predates the chicken which predates the egg laid by a chicken. The first egg from which a chicken hatched was from a bird almost but not quite a chicken and you'd probably be completely incapable of drawing a line at which generation it is and successfully defending that decision
probably be completely incapable of drawing a line at which generation it is
Yep. A good point I skirted past in my logic rundown for simplicity.
We call them chicken eggs even when they're unfertilized.
My chicken eggs were laid by chickens and contain breakfast.
Fish have eggs.
Oh but from a biological perspective they are a whole different case. The general rule would be that fish doesn't lay this type of eggs (with specific layers and a hard shell). Amphibians neither. And then, evolutionary speaking, came the amniote egg. With feats that work as an adaptation to earth's dry environments, without water. It's really a 'deal breaker' and as such it's treated by biology books because we split all animals between those that have such eggs and those who don't...
Shark eggs are absolutely wild
Do they produce chickens?
Chicken of the sea
Which came first, anisogamy or the egg?
chicken butt. hehe,
wait tell it again i'll come in at the right time
Won't that Jim meme ever die???