That's the beauty of CR4!

The long and, sometimes, ridiculous, road toward getting answers to a simple(?) question often deviate into a web of various topics that many times don't have a "hill of beans" to do with the original post.

Oftentimes, wound within the squirley (no offense Kris) vines (threads) there lies insights and knowledge galore, and, in spite of ourselves, we do produce a useable product (answer) don't you think?

Since finding, (and joining) CR4, I have had far more knowledge thrown at me than I could possibly absorb for a long time. It's almost like "trying to get an education here is like trying to get a drink from a fire hose". Nevertheless, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

The humor interspersed with serious posts are what make this forum great. Since joining, I have learned much, and perhaps contributed a little. I look forward to great dialogue in the coming year.

Never took it as a complaint. You just fot me to thinking about what makes this forum great. Right Moose?

An evolved Monkey, smiling at a frustrated cat.

I have read the Bible. It was my choice. I re-read as a fully (?) matured adult, and have read other religious works as well.

However when I was taught Darwinian evolution theory I had no choice. I have since come to appreciate it, greatly. But I had no choice in the matter initially.

It seems we might have a geographical difference here. The separation of church and state forbids any religious teachings in school and has for quite some time.

No disrespect intended. I am very open-minded to all discussions. Alas, we shall move on I am sure.

A warm and fuzzy feeling abounds----

cr3

Cat and monkey sail off into sunset in pea green boat replete with honey and plenty of money to set up open learning centre on distant island ...

Del

pea green? well, I guess thats ok. At least it's not a green peace boat.

cr3

My two cents.

If by chicken you mean chicken and by egg you mean chicken egg, then I'd say the egg had to come first (if you believe in evolution, which I do).

However, if by chicken you mean "the first life on earth", then the answer is the chicken came first as eggs didn't evolve until long after life began.

Of course, if by chicken you mean organized agriculture and egg you mean civilization, then I think in that case it was the chicken as you would need to have the adequate food stores to support an egg from the chicken.

Though you could have meant "the growth of trade in the 13th century" as the chicken and "the Mongol conquest" as the egg, at which point I can honestly say I'm not clear which came first.

I should point out that another poster made an excellent point that we do generally eat eggs in the morning and chicken later in the day, which would indicate that in that case, the eggs come first, unless you've had a late night and you're looking for something to eat at 4 in the morning, at which point you'll probably go for the chicken rather than the egg, unless you're at Denny's. Ok, I digress.

I should point out that another poster made an excellent point that we do generally eat eggs in the morning and chicken later in the day, which would indicate that in that case, the eggs come first....

Actually the chicken lays its eggs at night. So by that logic, I eat chicken for dinner, the uneaten chicken lays an egg and I eat eggs for breakfast so the chicken comes first. Now this is over the span of 2, 12 hr periods which is a further debate. Please be aware that the debate can be broadened when taking into account the vast number of food recipes which require eggs as a critical ingredient.

I can't concede the point CR3 (can I call you CR3?). As you well know, the chicken that was eaten (ate?)(consumed?) is not in fact the same chicken that lays the egg. You have very cleverly turned this into a "which came first, the chicken, the other chicken, or the egg". Now don't get me wrong, two chickens are better than one, and I like eggs too, but it's not the original question I was trying to answer.

I'm hungry, I'm gonna have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

CR3, the only chickens that lay their eggs at night are the battery hens in a cage, fooled by artificial light into thinking it is another day- when same can't lay 2 eggs a day/night, they are sold cheaply( I have some)- in other words man has exploited the chicken for profit(why is this no surprise?)- a free range, natural chicken, lays it's egg in it's own chosen nest, supported by it,s rooster- who contrary to popular opinion, form a relationship with 1, or maybe 3 hens(subject to supply)- it is a 2 way thing- the hen & compatible rooster- then again there are hens, who for whatever reason(not running away fast enough?) who get raped by non dominant roosters- it is not very long before these hens hide away, & usually die.

You forgot that the egg layers mash has enough stimulant chemicals in it to need a licence to by it. That is suppose to keep the meth labs from getting hold of it.

The industry may have changed this over the years.

2cents from

Brad

Hi Roger

However, if by chicken you mean "the first life on earth", then the answer is the chicken came first as eggs didn't evolve until long after life began.

Again I think the definition of the egg is limited. You refer to the shelled egg that is considered as the part of a social breakfast.

The biological definition of the egg will be a single cell that develops into an entire organism.

Thus, even the most ancient species may pass as unicellular beings and in a vague sense may still be called primitive eggs.

So, I would say, whether it was the chicken egg or any other egg, the egg was first!

You Wrote: "The biological definition of the egg will be a single cell that develops into an entire organism."

Eggs only apply to multicelled organisms, whereas single cell organisms dominated the Earth for billions of years. They reproduced by cell division for the most part.

Websters Medical Dictionary defines Egg as:

1 : the hard-shelled reproductive body produced by a bird and especially by the common domestic chicken (Gallus gallus)
2 : an animal reproductive body consisting of an ovum together with its nutritive and protective envelopes and having the capacity to develop into a new individual capable of independent existence
3 : a mature egg that has undergone reduction, is ready for fertilization, and takes the form of a relatively large inactive gamete providing a comparatively great amount of reserve material and contributing most of the cytoplasm of the zygote

The key to all those definitions is that there is a reserve material for the nutrition of the developing organism.

Clearly in this case the chicken "life on earth" came before the egg "anything that we can reasonably call an egg".

Mrinny,

The confusion comes from the definition of egg that you are using, which is not correct. Its true that part of an egg is a single cell that develops into an entire organism, but you'll see if you look it up, this is only one of the criteria that make an egg an egg. The three criteria are:

1. Has cell that develops into and entirely new organism

2. Has extra nutrients that give cell a head start

3. Has a protective barrier that keeps these nutrients with the cell and protects the cell as it develops (splits and re-splits).

So, what I'm trying to tell you is that a cell alone is not an egg in any sense of its definition. The thing you are trying to call an egg is in fact called an "egg cell", one of the three parts of an egg. But don't take my word for it.

http://medical.merriam-webster.com/medical/egg

http://www.royalalbertamuseum.ca/vexhibit/eggs/vexhome/whategg.htm

Fish Egg

Reptile Egg

Bird Egg

Plant Seed (essentially a plant egg)

Even spores have a protective shell and a small amount of nutrients (much less than a seed or an egg though)

So what I'm saying is, I don't mind if we stretch the definition of egg as long as that definition has all the parts of an egg, a cell, nutrients, and a protective barrier. But single cell organisms had been reproducing long before nature developed even the simplest concept of an egg (for now the simplest I can think of is a spore, but there probably is something older and simpler).

I hope you see where I'm coming from. I have to admit I'm enjoying this debate, and I'm fully aware that's probably a little sad ;)

So by your definition; a fruit is an egg.

Let me put it this way, I'd accept a fruit as a "stretch". It's basically the same thing. However, I'm perfectly happy sticking to a stricter definition of egg, I'm sure we are all smart enough here to find one.

My original point, which has been trampled in this diversion of "what is an egg" was that first life developed, a glorified chemical reaction if you will, that through evolution got better and better at persisting. One of evolution's useful innovations was the concept of an egg, that is, giving a new organism a bit of a head start. This gave the organism a better chance of surviving and thus became the norm. Much much later nature had the great idea (randomly, as is her M.O.) that if you kept the egg in a pouch in the parent organism, the child is afforded even more protection, and thus the womb evolved.

In essence, an egg is a sort of external, rudimentary womb, and that, even in its simplest form (spore?), certainly came many cycles of evolution after life began.

SO, if by Chicken we mean "life on earth" and by Egg we mean Egg, then I think in this case the Chicken came first.

The egg is a slight disadvantage to other forms of reproduction.

Care to elaborate as to why or should I just take your word for it?

Please don't take my word for it. But I have to ask, are you serious?

Who are we to say there is no Bill W.?

"The egg is a slight disadvantage"

& a major development! (SEX!!)

Eggs B4 fertilisation are 'haploid' (having 1/2 the regular compliment of chromosomes)

& after fertilisation 'diploid', (chromosomes paired)

That way mutations can be circulated/eliminated through regular life.

fruit not egg. fruit womb analogy. egg womb analogy, go figure..

Thanks for playing.

Here is my take on the whole chicken and egg theory:

I once asked a professor at the university in which I was attending the same question; Which came first the chicken or the egg? His argument was the egg came first as dinosaurs laid eggs, and eventually evolved into a chicken as we know it today. The question was not which came first the chicken or the chicken egg, in other words which came first the wolf or the dog. The wolf is of k-9 origin just as the egg is an egg no matter what laid it. Did I make sense as I just confused myself.

I thought I was confused, but now I'm really convolutibly confused.

We call this thing a chicken. What if it were just some kind of mutated clone?

I think maybe there was an egg belonging to "something" on one side of the road in, perhaps, sometime BC, and the chicken decided to cross the road just to hatch that egg. Of course, at the time, that thing that wanted to cross the road was greatly frightened and had many reservations because of the gridlocked dinosaur traffic (7 lanes wide).

So Chickiwannabe hesitated for many eons until finally a little bitty cousin of Jonathan Livington decided, the hell with the dinos. Somebody's gotta' take care of that poor egg over there. So, throwing all caution to the volcanic winds, the brave little soul darted mightily across that ancient road and sat steadfastly upon the lonesome little "something" egg.

Now we actually know the answer to that age old question of why the chicken crossed the road.

But, how do we know, in the long run, that it wasn't really Horton that hatched that Who?

Ah; We Humans,

We believe evrything they tell us.

Parallel Universe, String Theory, Creation, Evolution, Big Bang, ET, and now Chupacabras. Not only do we believe it, we ponder and eventually swing and shift in and out of reality!

/:€ Hey, maybe the chupacabra came first, then the egg, then the chicken?

You've been talking to vermin haven't you?

To truly look at something scientifically is to look at something without bias. After looking at the different scientific evidence without the commentary attached by so many "learned individuals" who were trying to espouse their personal position while seemingly just explaining the facts in my textbooks, I saw many myth busters to the many theories (Definition of theory-a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena) after researching the evidence presented.

The stretch of faith to believe the disproven more than proven evolutionary theory, which was proposed btw in order to justify slavery of the African, is beyond me. However, after reading the Bible carefully and finding all of the scientific evidence that has been proven inerrantly accurate, it takes no such stretch.

The reason for your apparent displeasure at my attempts to discuss this without any form of negativity (as you feel attacked not by me, but by your own conscious).

Your apparent attempt to put "religious fanatics" as you may be classifying me as beneathe your intellectual station is mistaken. I was invited to MENSA as a teenager, with an IQ over 170.

As is mentioned before if anyone who would like to discuss this in a less public and therefore less intimidating manner, please email me using the CR4 mail system.

If you were to go all the way back to the primordial seas a billion years (or so)ago and waited around for the lightning strikes to occur that first caused sudars and proteins form, wouldn't we all have the same ability as plants and other non-humans some where in our developmental stages in utero? Along the line of the tail that we have at some point during gestation (akin to a pollywogs tail)... Or is it that mulitple strikes just happened to occur and cause different types of things to occur? Why can't I sit outside under the beautiful southern California sky soaking up rays of sun and feel nourisment from the sunshine? If we all (all life that is animal and vegetation, etc.) came into being from these prehistoric muck ponds then why don't we have the ability to photosynthesize?

Who are we to say that we cannot be gods ourselves. We were created in His image so we should have the same potential.

Team Races to Catalog Every Species on Earth

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
March 5, 2002

Sometimes the world seems like a small place, but just how well do we really know it? When it comes to the other living creatures with which we share the planet, we don't know nearly as much as might be expected.

"Imagine doing chemistry knowing only one third of the periodic table," said biologist Terry Gosliner. "Sure, it can be done, but with an immense handicap. We are trying to do biology knowing perhaps only a tenth, or one hundredth, of our species. It is an immense handicap that does not need to exist."

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That's why Gosliner and other scientists are involved in a nonprofit organization called the All Species Foundation. The group is dedicated to a straightforward but daunting goal: to discover, identify, and classify every living species on Earth within a single human generation or in other words over the next 25 years.

Once online, the information can be organized and linked with advanced database systems, eventually resulting in a "home page" for each species.

To date, taxonomists have identified less than two million distinct species, mostly mammals and birds. But it's estimated that the number of undiscovered species—primarily fish, fungi, insects, and microbes—ranges from ten million to more than one hundred million. Even at the low estimate, it's an enormous number.

New species are being classified at a rate of only 15,000 a year. That's not nearly fast enough to significantly close the knowledge gap.

Since the earliest days of the science—in the 18th century, when Linnaeus founded the modern binomial system of classifying plants and animals—taxonomists have dreamed of the ultimate goal: the classification of every living species on Earth. Despite their tremendous efforts, they have never come close to the prize. So why might they succeed now?

Technology May Speed Science

The advent of new technology is one factor bringing the goal within reach. "Five years ago we didn't have the capability to put every species on the Web and make it accessible to scientists all over the world," said All Species CEO Ryan Phelan.

Now, technological advances may have opened a critical window of time for the project's success.

Modern researchers have tools that can greatly increase the sluggish pace of species identification. Three-dimensional imaging, for example, makes it possible to share images of specimens instantly on the Web.

In the field, advances such as foggers for collecting insect species, the GPS system, and remote-controlled undersea equipment allow teams to push research farther, and faster, than ever before.

Continued on Next Page >>

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0305_0305_allspecies.html

The world has a paradox, but I have three of a kind...

"Which came first. The Chicken or the Egg.

Now let's be serious for just a moment"

LOL if the chicken was not always here then the egg came first because it is a HEN that lays eggs

Ok ill be serious for just moment

"If there has been a first man he must have been born without father or mother which is repugnant to nature. For there could not have been a first egg to give a beginning to birds, or there should have been a first bird which gave a beginning to eggs; for a bird comes from an egg." The same he held good for all species, believing, with Plato, that everything before it appeared on earth had first its being in spirit" Wiki.

Amazing,

The more stupid and senseless the post is the more participation it has.

I should have been out of here a long time ago. Bye now.

Wangito.