Which Came first: The Chicken or The Egg?

An age-old question that is often asked as a riddle: Which came first Chicken or egg?

If you say chicken, the question arises which egg did the first chicken hatch from? And if you say egg, the question arises which chicken laid the first egg?

Let's answer these questions in this conversation. Come, let me teach you the mystery of eggs.

About 150 million years ago, when the earth was ruled by dinosaurs. Dinosaurs that ran, dinosaurs that flew. This was the time when due to evolution, some dinosaurs started getting smaller and birds started evolving. The first birds evolved around this time. As evolution doesn't happen in a linear direction. It can happen in any direction, wherever it fits. So, some dinosaurs evolved into scarier dinosaurs like T-Rex and some dinosaurs got smaller and evolved into birds.

This is why it is said that the common chicken today and the dinosaur T-Rex had a common ancestor. The T-Rex's closest living relatives are present-day Chickens and Ostriches.

Look at an Ostrich closely, sometimes they give off a lot of dinosaur vibes. And all dinosaurs used to lay eggs like these ostriches and chickens. Even before the birds evolved, dinosaurs used to lay eggs. Among animals, the art of laying eggs is ancient. But the evolution of chicken took place only 3,500 years ago, around 1500 BC.

In Southeast Asia, people started farming rice and millet. A large quantity of grains was grown, which attracted a wild animal living in the nearby jungle. This animal was a wild red jungle fowl, very similar to a chicken. But the difference is that it lived in the jungles of Southeast Asia. When humans started farming, they started living near the farms because of the grains. And around this time, humans started domesticating it.

Because of this domestication, it evolved through thousands of years, and it evolved into today's chicken. This species of jungle fowl is still alive. You can still find it in the jungles of Southeast Asia. But if you compare it to a common chicken, you can see some differences. The scientific name for this jungle fowl species is Gallus Gallus. And the scientific name for a common chicken is Gallus Gallus Domesticus.

So one thing is clear here, eggs are 300 million years old and chicken is 3,500 years old. So eggs evolved much earlier than chickens. But you will say that the 300 million years old eggs were not laid by a chicken.

So the next question here is, did the chicken come first or the chicken's eggs?

It is not so difficult to get to the answer . If you understand the stages of evolution. It's very simple. Chicken evolved from wild red jungle fowl. This wild red jungle fowl must have evolved from another animal. Let's call that animal a proto-chicken. The ancestors of the chicken.

So, there must have been a point in time when two proto-chickens mated. During reproduction, there must have been genetic mutations. And due to this, an egg was formed from which the first red jungle fowl was born. And in the same way, the first chicken must have been born too.

The combination of two "proto-chickens" DNA created the first chicken DNA. This evolution process occurs only during reproduction. It is only after this that the true chicken would have laid more eggs giving birth to more chickens. So the answer to this question is very clear.

The egg came first.

And this egg was not laid by a chicken. But it was given by an ancestor species of a chicken, which was almost like a chicken.