that's not the question though. you're going against grice's maxims.
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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A chicken egg came before the chicken because it is the same animal and the egg stage is earlier than the adult stage.
It's really a question of creationism vs evolution... God would've created the chicken first
Something something mysterious ways.
TIL the first chicken egg wasn't laid by a chicken
if you want something crazier, look into ring species. where different species of animals have all their in-between species still alive and mate with each other, but the ones at the extremes cant mate with each other
Well...yeah, that's how evolution works. Answer is still the Egg.
Proto-chicken>chicken>eschato-chicken
Chickens have "evolved" in recent years more than recent centuries
We just keep the chicken name but at what point do they become a different animal.
Evolution is slow and has no definite point in time of "First official example of a 2000s definition of a chicken"
It's similar to the paradox of the heap.
Of course a "chicken" layed the first chicken egg. But if we called that "chicken" a chicken then her egg would be the first chicken egg. Not the one she just layed.
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God creates eggs. Eggs create dinosaurs. God kills dinosaurs. Eggs inherit the Earth
edit I did it. I forgot the chicken
Even if you're talking about chicken eggs specifically it's still the egg first. The first chicken egg would have been laid by a proto chicken
proto chicken
Bro chickens are already loaded with protein, what are you doing?
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Oh wow, this is much simpler explanation than the obtuse one I use: "1st chicken ever definitely came from an egg but the creature that laid that egg wasn't a chicken."
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This has been my go-to answer for years now. Eggs existed before chickens did. You could say they Eggsisted first.
OK but what did the first egg laying animal come out of.
Some non-egg laying animal gave birth to an egg laying animal due to a beneficial mutation. So the "chicken" (or rather, any egg laying animal) came first.
I’m laughing my ass off rn because I’m imagining this process happening today like imagine giving birth to your daughter the normal way and she gives birth by laying eggs
Not exactly, they produced eggs just not with the hard outer shell built for dry air filled environment. THATS where the next land dwelling being came from.
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I disagree, i think a chicken is the animal that comes from an egg and then lays an egg (to start the cycle anew).
If the first animal you call a chicken isnt hatched from an egg then i think its not a chicken, but a predecessor.
That chicken's parent laid an egg though so it wasn't the first egg laying animal.
Correct, not the first egg laying animal, however the first chicken was hatched from a chicken egg.
No, I don't think I'd agree. Something gave birth to something with a mutation that caused it to lay eggs that we'd call chicken eggs that produce chicken. Itself was born from a creature that didn't lay chicken eggs.
Well now i think im inclined to agree with you.
I have been defining it as a true chicken is the animal that came from the egg and reproduces the same animal in egg form.
But if you were to say instead that the final mutation that created the gentically distinct animal we call a chicken, would still be that animal regardless of how it was created.
Similar to if a chain of self replicating robots is traced back to the origonal unit, its still a self replicating robot even if the first was built by hands.
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The rooster came first
Everyone here seems to be missing the point of the question. The chicken isn't the key point. It stands in for all egg laying animals. To rephrase the question: how is it possible that an early species was able to develop egg laying abilities, considering the problem of that animal not having been born from an egg? I suspect the real answer has something to do with fish ...
- Shells are soft gloopy things laid in lakes
- Evolutionary advantage: Eggs laid on the edge of lakes away from water predators
- Evolutionary advantage: Harder eggs survive longer further out of water
- Evolutionary advantage: Harder land eggs give rise to amphibous/land animals
- Evolutionary advantage: Amphibous/land animals lay land eggs
- etc.
I've always interpreted this as more of a metaphorical question.
However, this general response is where I usually take things if pushed for an answer. Meaning, egg laying species existed for hundreds of millions of years before chickens and chickens evolved from egg laying species, so the egg came first.
A lot of people try to interpret this on the micro scale view: The idea that there was one specific event (place, time, individual) where a non-chicken laid the first egg that hatched out to became the first chicken.
The reality of the situation is counterintuitive, though. Life, nature, and even taxonomy are so much more complex that this situation. It can be hard to conceptualize, but there literally never was a case where a non-chicken laid an egg, and the resulting offspring was the first chicken ever.
The species concept really only applies on a population level (barring exceptions like cases where there's literally only 1 known living individual remaining of a soon to be extinct species). And furthermore, taxonomy is an artificial, human concept -- nature does not abide -- and a bit of an art at that. Even if we could somehow scale back in time and view every individual in the chicken lineage as far back as we desire and in much detail as we desired, there would be no consensus on where in that mess chickens emerged from non-chickens.
So, this is one of those cases where I would actually advise -- don't think too hard about it or take it too seriously and accept the question for its metaphorical nature.
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I've always understood this debate as a veiled religious thing. Chicken = religion, god creates chickens; or Egg = science, animals are products of evolution, and thus naturally the egg must come first.
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Chickens are dinosaurs
I fool-proofed the question..."Which came first, the egg of a chicken, or the chicken?". And you can't say they use eggs in dinosaur shaped pasta. /s
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