This is an age-old question: which came first, the chicken or the egg? This is such a question that it seems very difficult to satisfy the arguers with its answer. Many types of research have been done on this, many arguments have been given. Perhaps you also know the correct answer to this question. But the science of development of organisms is called evolutionary science. Explores the answer to this question in a very interesting way. You may be surprised to know that both the answers are correct and the reasons explain why this is so?
eggs are very old
It turns out that eggs have been around for as long as life on Earth. Evolution experts say that eggs evolved millions of years before the hen, but this does not mean that the egg came first.
importance of egg
“The evolution of the first eggs may be closely linked to the birth of life as we know it,” says Jules Howard, a zoology reporter and author of Infinite Life, a book on the evolution of eggs. Experts argue that eggs are like life-support capsules for animals, providing genetic diversity and the opportunity to create unique individuals.
Eggs came into the world during the time of dinosaurs, millions of years before the existence of chickens. (Symbolic photo: Pixabay)
eggs came first, if
If we accept that the egg is just a ‘life-supporting capsule’ for an animal, then surely these would be considered eggs in some form or the other. Early eggs were very different from what we know today. They were given by creatures like jellyfish or worms in the sea. Given that this was millions of years before life appeared on land, it seems safe to say that the egg came before the chicken.
and when did the hens come,
Dr Ellen Mather, a paleontologist at Flinders University and an expert in ancient birds, says: ‘If you look at it holistically in terms of eggs, the answer is definitely eggs. But there is another aspect of the question regarding chickens also. Chickens evolved from wild wild birds that adapted to living near humans. Due to which modern species of chickens were domesticated.
Chickens came into the world about 100 million years ago. (Symbolic photo: Canva)
how many years ago,
Previously, researchers believed that the first true domestic chickens emerged about 10,000 years ago. However, later analysis shows that many of the alleged ‘hen’ specimens were actually from other wild birds such as ducks. Recent studies suggest that humans in Southeast Asia first domesticated these birds between 1650 BC and 1250 BC. With this, the maximum age of the chicken will be 3,500 years.
There were eggs even when there were no chickens.
Eggs, on the other hand, date back millions of years to the time of the dinosaurs, with the first hard-shelled eggs being laid by dinosaurs during the early Jurassic period. Even if we limit our search to eggs laid by birds, the chicken still lags behind by more than ten million years. Fossil evidence indicates that reptiles and dinosaurs were laying eggs long before the domestic chicken. Therefore, from any evolutionary perspective, the egg definitely came before the chicken.
so what is the right question,
‘Depending on how you interpret the question, both answers could be correct,’ says Dr Mather. Instead of asking whether the chicken or the egg evolved first, a more classic version of the question is to ask whether the chicken or the egg came first. The obvious puzzle is that we might think that a chicken could arise only from a hen’s egg, which, naturally, could only be laid by another hen.
Dr. Mather explains that the first true chicken emerged from the eggs of a partially domesticated red jungle fowl. This means that the first true chicken hatched before any true chicken laid eggs. Therefore, if the question refers to hen’s eggs, the answer is hen.
Tags: Bizarre news, Science, science facts, science news, Weird news
FIRST PUBLISHED: October 13, 2024, 15:12 IST