“Does the chicken come from the egg or does the egg come from the chicken?” We answered the question scientifically. Let’s answer this still debated question.
There are some questions, they are asked in every discussion, everyone gives different answers and in the end it becomes inextricable. Do such questions come to your mind? Yes, as you can tell from the title. “Does the chicken come from the egg or does the egg come from the chicken” We will look for an answer. In fact, we will try to answer this question, which appears as a paradox, by considering it within the framework of science.
The reason why this question is talked about so much is because it is a really difficult question. Because you need a chicken for an egg. The chicken also hatches from the egg. For this reason, a paradox emerges. Of course, when we approach this question from the framework of science, we can solve the things in our minds much more easily. For that, we can dig deep into evolutionary biology and figure out which came first.
Which came first: egg or chicken?
First of all, it is possible to clarify this issue very easily. The egg was something that existed long before the chicken. As you know, not only chickens lay eggs. Many animals already lay eggs. Eggs, which are technically based on trapping enough food for the embryo to survive and grow on its own in a shell, existed even when we went to the dinosaur era. Yes, the T-Rex, which would have shaken the ground under our feet with its gigantic size had it lived, was also an egg-laying creature. From this point of view, the egg existed long before the chicken. Considering that the eggs of birds evolved 150 million years ago, we can see more clearly that egg evolution cannot be compared to chickens.
We know that eggs are much older. However, let’s focus on the chicken and egg relationship without distracting our subject. Chickens exist in a relatively small time frame compared to eggs. Actually chicken, a domesticated animal, They emerged as a result of humans choosing the least aggressive wild birds and allowing them to breed. It is estimated that this process, which started about 10,000 years ago, occurred at similar times in several different places.
Evolution from wild ancestors to chickens
When we look at the evolutionary process of the chicken, we see that its wild ancestors usually red forest birds It is thought to be a tropical bird that lives in the forests of Southeast Asia. There are probably other forest bird species included in the genetic mix in addition to this bird.
People began to breed the most domesticated red forest birds (Gallus gallus). As a result of this separation, red forest birds evolved into a new subspecies. If the new speciesgallus gallus domesticus“, in other words, it was chicken.
After all, what do we say: Did the chicken come from the egg?
Yes, it is a definite fact that the chicken comes from the egg. At one point, a creature almost chicken-like came to life in its genetic makeup. transferred a small mutation to the egg. This egg also led to the emergence of the chicken we know. Of course, what we refer to as “at some point” didn’t actually happen at one point. Many small mutations came together and this happened over time.
A few years ago, a group of scientists discovered a protein necessary for the formation of a chicken egg’s shell. This protein was only found in chicken ovaries. These data led to the findings that the chicken came before the egg. Because yes, the first chicken may have hatched from an egg, but this egg did not belong to a chicken. For an egg to belong to a chicken a protein called OV-17 it was supposed to be. This phenomenon was not found very convincing, even by the scientists who discovered the protein. One of them described the question posed to him as “Fun but pointless”.
Yes, the chicken came from the egg.
The OV-17 protein evolved as a result of a beneficial mutation in the ancestors of today’s chickens and became inherited in chickens. Dominant protein in the ancestors of chickens eggs with OV-17, then he produced the chickens we know today. This shows us that the first chicken was produced from a chicken egg produced by one of the chicken’s close ancestors.
The philosophically debated “Does the chicken come out of the egg or does the egg come out of the chicken?” We tried to clarify the question scientifically. When we look at the result, we can clearly see that every chicken comes from one egg. Although the research on whether this egg is a chicken egg is still going on, the answer to our question will be “the chicken hatched from an egg”.
Source: 1, 2, 3, 4