Odd News

Chicken or egg? Answer hatched

(China Daily)
Updated: 2006-05-29 05:35

It is a question that has vexed philosophers since the Greeks. But it seems we may now have the answer to the beguilingly simple question: "Which came first?"

It's the egg.

This reassuring conclusion was the work of an expert panel including a philosopher, a geneticist and a chicken farmer.

"Whether chicken eggs preceded chickens hinges on the nature of chicken eggs," said panel member and philosopher of science David Papineau at King's College London.

"I would argue it's a chicken egg if it has a chicken in it. If a kangaroo laid an egg from which an ostrich hatched, that would surely be an ostrich egg, not a kangaroo egg. By this reasoning, the first chicken did indeed come from a chicken egg, even though that egg didn't come from chickens."

The panel was unanimous on the correct chicken/egg pecking order. John Brookfield, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Nottingham, said the solution involves piecing together the speciation event in which chickens first evolved.

He imagines two non-chicken parents getting together and giving rise to the first individual of a new species because of a genetic mutation. "The first chicken must have differed from its parents by some genetic change, perhaps a very subtle one, but one which caused this bird to be the first ever to fulfil our criteria for truly being a chicken," said Professor Brookfield.

"Thus the living organism inside the eggshell would have had the same DNA as the chicken that it would develop into, and thus would itself be a member of the species of chicken," he added.

The debate was organized to coincide with the launch of Chicken Little on DVD.

(China Daily 05/29/2006 page1)