chicken + egg theory – more proof!

Posted by Luke Williams on April 25, 2006 in general thoughts | 2 comments

I know you all think I’m bonkers with my insistance that the egg came first from two “non-chickens” in the age old dilemma:

“which came first the chicken or the egg?”

So I was most pleased to see this today, and felt I had to share it with you all….

In nature, living things evolve through changes in their DNA. In an animal like a chicken, DNA from a male sperm cell and a female ovum meet and combine to form a zygote — the first cell of a new baby chicken. This first cell divides innumerable times to form all of the cells of the complete animal. In any animal, every cell contains exactly the same DNA, and that DNA comes from the zygote.

Chickens evolved from non-chickens through small changes caused by the mixing of male and female DNA or by mutations to the DNA that produced the zygote. These changes and mutations only have an effect at the point where a new zygote is created. That is, two non-chickens mated and the DNA in their new zygote contained the mutation(s) that produced the first true chicken. That one zygote cell divided to produce the first true chicken.

Prior to that first true chicken zygote, there were only non-chickens. The zygote cell is the only place where DNA mutations could produce a new animal, and the zygote cell is housed in the chicken’s egg. So, the egg must have come first.