It’s always the egg because the thing that laid what we consider a genetic chicken egg wasn’t an animal that we consider a genetic chicken. Mutations happen in utero or whatever it’s called when a baby is growing in an egg
As others have said, this is a side discussion inspired by the headline but not really related to the article.
That said, there is no proto-chicken that laid a chicken egg or a chicken hatching out of a proto-chicken egg. There was no “first chicken.” Populations evolve, not individuals. Let’s not confuse a de novo mutation with evolution. Evolution is a change in allele frequencies over time, and speciation is reproductive isolation of populations experiencing allele frequency shifts.
There are still population-wide polymorphisms in humans that are present in gorillas but have been fixed in chimpanzees. Populations of proto-chickens gradually evolved into chickens, but if there were a hard line to define the distinction (like the wavelength where orange ends), then there would have been a long time of proto-chickens and chickens interbreeding and their descendents oscillating back and forth between the two definitions over generations.
I also think the chicken or egg question isn’t great and agree that it evolved over a long span of time, multiple times. The oscillation between the proto species and species is really interesting to think about and makes a lot of sense. Thanks for your insight.
I hear you and actually subscribe to your magazine. But…
Is your chicken-zero growing inside a chicken egg, or is it growing in a proto-chicken-thingo™ egg? I agree the thing growing will be born as the worlds first chicken and then grow its own eggs but what do we call the egg it’s in?
Is the egg named after the thing it hatches? Or, is the egg named after the thing that made the egg? Which might be the same as asking, is it called a “chicken egg” or “chicken’s egg” … or… both?
I guess I’ll need to actually read the research paper to find out.
The domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) was a mutation of the red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) that occurred after fertilization and before hatching. Therefore, the egg that the first domestic chicken hatched from was a domestic chicken egg laid by a red jungle fowl.
But did the mutation occur before or after the egg was laid?
If it happened after the egg was laid, then when the egg was laid, it was not a chicken egg, only transforming into a chicken egg at the moment the mutation occurred.
Regardless, at some point the egg became the first chicken egg before the first chicken hatched from it.
Wouldn’t the creature hatched from this mutated egg only really become a “chicken” by successfully reproducing, and passing its “chickenness” to a new generation of creatures? Beyond that, wouldn’t there need to be enough successful generations of “chicken” reproduction in order to cement “chickens” into the biosphere, for long enough that humans evolve and identify them as “chickens”?
Only after that could you look into the past and say that egg was the first “chicken egg.” At the time the egg was laid, and I would argue when the egg mutated, and then also at any time before “chickenness” was defined, there would be no way to correctly assert that a specific egg was “chickeny”.
So … “chickenness” must have come into existence first, and only then could it be possible to look back in time and identify the first egg that qualifies as a “chicken.”
Yeah that title is written by someone who’s not understood evolutionary mechanics.
I have no sympathy for this pseudo science bullshit title game.
Man these “science communication” websites have become really clickbaity and exaggerate everything with barely any critical lens.
I’m shocked! 🤯🫨
Just kidding, I ignored the headline and read the article. It really is interesting science. I had to run to Wikipedia to reference a bunch of terms, though. I’ve paid only limited attention to biology at this level. Haha. For the record though, I’m not shocked. 😏
It was actually a guy named Greg who came first.
He got gregnant and the rest is history.
history.gregstory.ftfy.
