Hello! I am a huge fan of your site and science as such, but I wonder why the famous question - which came first, the chicken or the egg - is not on the list of children's questions until now? I am sure that few parents will be able to easily give a clear answer. I look forward to your answer with great impatience.

Oddly enough, this famous question can be answered unequivocally - the egg appeared earlier. Only this egg was not chicken at all. Or maybe not quite chicken.

But first, to make the answer clearer, you need to understand what a chicken is and what a chicken egg is. It would seem, what is there to explain? Everyone already knows this: mom buys eggs in the store, and all the children saw the chicken in the picture or in the zoo (and some of them in the wild, in the village). However, in reality, things are often not at all like what they appear to be when you just look at them.

You have to be especially careful with eggs. You look at it - it seems to be chicken ... And suddenly - bang! And a crocodile hatches from it (Fig. 2). This can lead to dangerous confusion, as in Bulgakov's story "Fatal Eggs" (for me, this is a novel according to all the main diagnostic features, but here literary critics know better).

And all because all eggs are more or less similar. Not necessarily externally appearance You can confuse a chicken egg with a crocodile egg, but no one, of course, will confuse a frog or fish egg with a chicken egg. But in fact it is the same thing - fertilized eggs.

Egg cells are similar in principle to ordinary cells. They also have a nucleus, cytoplasm and an outer membrane. On top of it there is almost always a thin shell of proteins. But a chicken egg is much larger than an ordinary egg and is more complex. The diameter of an ordinary cell is one hundredth or one fiftieth of a millimeter. The diameter of a human egg is about one-twentieth of a millimeter. The egg of a frog - an egg - without a shell has a diameter of about one millimeter. The ovum of a chicken is the yolk of an egg. The nucleus is not visible in it, because it is small and transparent. And everything else, protein and shell, are complex shells (Fig. 3). With them, the chicken dresses her egg to protect the future chicken from drying out, pathogenic bacteria and other adversities.

It seems that some people still think that the yolk is the nucleus of the egg, the protein is the cytoplasm, and the shell is the shell. I once, about fifteen years ago, witnessed how a biology teacher explained this in a lesson. In this case, the teacher was wrong! (It’s even partly clear where the wind blows from: geologists and geographers abuse the comparison of an egg with the Earth: the yolk is the core, the protein is the mantle, and the shell is the earth’s crust.)

As in the nucleus of any cell, the nucleus of the egg contains hereditary information. It is written on special very long molecules (they are called DNA). What is hereditary information, in the first approximation, can be explained even to someone who knows nothing about molecules. This is information about how to make a chicken or a person out of an egg. The information is written in letters in one line. The length of this record for a chicken is about two and a half billion letters. different letters all organisms have only four. And they make up words of only three letters. Phrases are composed of such words (they are called genes). The phrases are quite long. They can have a hundred words, and a thousand. Each phrase, if the cell reads it, turns into a protein - a complex machine molecule.

It is proteins that contract our muscles, carry oxygen from the lungs, strengthen bones and cartilage, and make all sorts of other substances for us. And the color of our hair and eyes, the shape of the nose and ears, and in many ways even character traits and intelligence depend on the composition of proteins. And in general, all our signs, including species differences between chicken, crocodile and man.

In a chicken or a human, the body is made up of hundreds of billions of cells, all of which come from an egg. Moreover, chicken cells are very similar to human ones. Looking at a chicken and a person, it’s not easy to guess this! And in the nucleus of each cell in a chicken and a person there is information about the whole organism.

It seems that one hundred billion cells is a lot. But in fact, the egg and its descendants can divide quickly - say, once an hour. Then in ten hours there will be about 1000 cells (2×2×2×2×2×2×2×2×2×2 = 1024). Twenty hours later, a million. In thirty - a billion. Another 5–6 hours - and the desired number has been reached! So the cells especially can not be in a hurry. After all, in fact, a chicken develops in 21 days.

True, if you take one chicken cell with a nucleus and plant it in nutrient medium, then you won’t get a whole chicken in this way (although this number works with plants). Usually, animal cells remember “what they worked for” in the whole organism (see How do cells understand that some should become hair, others bones, third brains, etc.? And from which center are they given commands?) and retain their properties during reproduction outside the body. To get a whole animal from an ordinary cell, you need to extract the nucleus from it and place it inside the egg (and remove or destroy the nucleus of the egg). Then you can get the whole organism.

They do not do this with chickens and crocodiles - their eggs are difficult to work with. But with frogs, mice and many other mammals have already learned.

This means that in the cytoplasm of the egg there are some important substances, which help to read hereditary information in such a way as to get the whole organism. Also, the two copies of information in the eggs are not exactly normal. One copy in the form of a set of 39 chromosomes, that is, of 39 DNA molecules, is from a chicken. The second copy (also in the form of a set of 39 chromosomes) is given by a rooster. The rooster sperm fuses with the egg while it does not yet have a shell. Then the chicken dresses the egg with additional shells, lays the egg and begins to incubate it. The nucleus of the egg doubles all 78 chromosomes, and 78 chromosomes fall into each daughter cell.

Almost all animals and plants have eggs. But what about other organisms - unicellular? Single-celled organisms, such as amoeba, look very different from humans and chickens. But the method of recording information and cell division is almost the same for them. Information about the structure of the amoeba cell is contained in a single nucleus. During reproduction, the nucleus first divides, and then the cell, and two new amoeba are obtained. Amoeba don't have eggs or sperm.

But many single-celled organisms also have eggs. These "eggs" do not look very similar to chicken ones. And they behave differently. After merging with the sperm, they quickly divide several times, and then the resulting cells scatter about their business. This is how, for example, the eggs of the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas behave (Fig. 4).

Once upon a time, only single-celled organisms lived on Earth. This means that multicellular animals originated from some of them. Scientists do not know exactly where and when the unicellular organisms that became our ancestors lived. They probably lived in the shallow waters of the seas, and the estimated dates are from about a billion to 700 million years ago. But surprisingly, some of the genes in their eggs were already almost exactly the same as those of a chicken. This is known for certain, because such genes are generally almost the same in all organisms from cells with a nucleus. (Think about what these genes might be responsible for.) So "proto-proto-chicken" eggs existed a billion years before chickens.

And then, in some of our distant ancestor, the cells with flagella, which are formed during the division of the egg, ceased to scatter. They remained glued. We can say that it was the first "chicken" - the future animal. What supposedly happened next - willing parents can read here in this scientific article. Gradually, genes changed in such eggs - some were lost, some doubled, some new ones appeared (how this happens, we will analyze another time). Creatures came out of such eggs, more and more like chickens. From the eggs (caviar) fish began to emerge. Then, about 400 million years ago, some fish learned to breathe air and walk along the bottom on short legs. A little later, some of them began to crawl out onto land. Gradually, they turned into amphibians, similar to newts. They laid their eggs (eggs) in the water for a very long time. Finally the reptiles appeared. They "learned" to dress eggs with shells and lay them on land (they also include crocodiles - by the way, the closest relatives of birds from among modern reptiles).

Reptiles have legs so arranged that it is difficult for them to run for a long time. And being able to run fast and for a long time is, of course, very useful. And there were such reptiles that "learned" to do this. But for this they had to stand on their hind legs. This is how dinosaurs appeared.

The birds were already very close. All dinosaurs laid eggs, and some incubated them. Some of the dinosaurs, apparently, were very smart in general, they could take care of and raise their “chickens”. They were almost as smart as chickens (and chickens, contrary to popular belief, are very smart and cunning birds). And finally, in some of these dinosaurs, the genes changed slightly, and the scales on their bodies gradually turned into feathers. And the dinosaurs themselves (more precisely, some of them) did not die out at all - they turned into birds.

Thus, the first real animal egg appeared, probably more than 700 million years ago, and maybe more than a billion. The first dinosaur eggs, already very similar to chickens, appeared about 225 million years ago. And the first chickens - more or less close relatives of modern chickens - appeared only 90 million years ago. That's how much older the egg is! And the fact that the first eggs were not chicken - so the question does not ask about this ...

Logical paradoxes have always attracted philosophers. One of them is familiar to us. What came first: the egg or the chicken? On the one hand, this phrase has long come to symbolize empty disputes and solutions that cannot be found.

On the other hand, philosophers of all ages, and even modern scientists, have thought about solving the problem. I must say that the catch lies in the wording itself. Initially, it did not sound like "egg or chicken", but like "egg or bird". This is fundamentally important, because it makes it possible to generalize. Let's give examples.

What came first: the egg or the chicken? The opinion of the ancients

Aristotle and Plutarch came to the conclusion that they appeared at the same time, arguing something like this. The chicken (or bird) is born from an egg, so it cannot be the first. The egg is laid by the hen, so it cannot be the first either. Therefore, they appeared at the same time.

What first appeared: an egg or a chicken (from the point of view of modern scientists)

Contemporaries act more cunningly: they analyze the meaning of words. So, the egg, they say, is a whole series of mutations that led to the formation of this form. Undoubtedly, there is only one answer: the egg appeared first, because not only birds were born from eggs, but also dinosaurs, and

other animals that lived before them.

If we only mean a chicken egg, then the question will remain unanswered: scientists simply do not have the facts.

If, answering the question: "What appeared first: an egg or a chicken?", - the word "chicken" is replaced by the word "bird", then we will have to reason differently. Undoubtedly, other species of birds existed before the chicken. Some of them were intermediate and had features that did not quite resemble a chicken. They carried what looked like eggs. And only at some certain point in time they began to be called the words "chicken" or "egg". Such lengthy arguments do not answer the question posed. This method of asking questions and answers uses concepts with a fuzzy scope. This means that each term included in the phrase does not have a clear meaning. What is it about an egg? Who is meant by the name chicken? Everyone can give words their own, broader or narrower meaning. A non-paradoxical question should speak not just about an egg, but about a chicken egg. That is why there is no answer, more precisely, there may be several.

  1. Egg, because egg-laying appeared much earlier than the species, which was called "chicken", was formed.
  2. Hen, because she began to lay chicken eggs.

Other logical paradoxes

Such paradoxes are great training for the mind. History knows many of them.

  1. Everything written here is not true. If we accept that what is written has true value, then it will be false. But if we take for granted that the message is false, then what is written will turn out to be true.
  2. Limit yourself in everything, even in limitation. (Petronius).
  3. If you put a cat in a dark box, put a hammer and an ampoule of poison there, then the cat will be alive and dead at the same time (Schrödinger).
  4. If a grain of sand is removed from a heap, when will it cease to be a heap?

Such paradoxes can be conceptual, definitional, probabilistic, mathematical, topological, etc.

Hello site readers! Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The question is one of those that people have been interested in for many years. A simple question with a scientific answer.

Thinkers from ancient times have proposed theories that could explain the situation, but without evidence. Answer eternal question became a key point.

An “easy” solution to the dispute: after the progress of paleontology, some came to the conclusion that the testicle was immediately “born”, because birds, fish, reptiles, insects of all varieties were already rushing.

Obtaining the truth was then complicated by a lack of knowledge, poorly understood mechanisms of evolution and the impossibility of genetic analysis.

Where did the chicken come from? Hypotheses of contemporaries

The most commonly used criterion is crossbreeding: animals are considered to belong to the same species if they are able to reproduce offspring together and it is viable, fertile.

Under this definition, the donkey and horse are in different classes, since the mule is (usually) sterile.

However, this rate of interspecific fertilization is difficult to test, especially in the case of ancient individuals that are known only from fossils.

Therefore, appearance, genotype are also used to identify animals belonging to the same family.

The results of the experiments leave room for reflection, giving rise to lively discussions!

Evolutionists were of the opinion that in the beginning there was a testicle, since mutations occur only in a rudimentary form. They assumed the "birth" of a chicken from a derivative of another family from the existing ones.

According to the assumption of a number of biologists, the modern domestic clover is a subspecies of the wild rooster of Southeast Asia.

Interestingly, the researchers also showed a version that chickens (and winged ones in general) are distant descendants of dinosaurs.

Do not think that the tyrannosaurus once demolished the chicken-like structure: such a transformation was gradual! It is the accumulation of small changes in each generation as progress does not stop. The result is a transformation into new beings.

Who came first chicken or egg - answer

In 2010, British minds announced that they had scientifically solved the paradox by proving that the delicacy contained the (previously unknown) protein Ovocleidin-17, which is currently produced only in the oviducts.

It is impossible to reproduce the gene structure of a protein in the laboratory.

Attention! Ovocleidin-17 is produced ONLY by the chicken body. No other living creature in the world is capable of this.

Inquisitive minds have summed up that the first must have been demolished by a hack that has this famous “ingredient”.

Therefore, at first there was a hen, then she carried the “cub”.

We got a reasonable answer to the question: what came first - the chicken or the egg. Reveal to your friends and acquaintances the secret of the dilemma of the centuries. Share information by choosing desired button social network.

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Good luck and good mood!

The story of the creator.

The first to think about this problem was our Lord Almighty. Where should he start? From the chicken or from the egg? If you start with an egg, then you need to create two of them at once: one with a female and the other with a male. However, there is a small hitch: who will hatch them? Apostle Paul? Then chickens to feed, raise and protect? All this should be done by the chicken. Therefore, it is logical to start with it. However! Can a chicken, alone, conceive an egg? No, he can not. She's not a sexless amoeba. For this she needs a rooster. Without a rooster, the cycle of eggs in nature does not occur. So that's where you need to start.

The Lord took clay, molded a rooster and breathed life into it. Then I pulled the biggest feather out of his ass and made a chicken out of the feather. The creator looked at this pair and thought: “It turned out well! Darwin never dreamed of such a thing.” Then teleported a new one animal species to Earth and with the words: “Go, carry eggs and multiply,” he released them on all four sides.

And so it went from those ancient, prehistoric times - a rooster tramples a chicken, a chicken lays eggs, and only then the next chicken generation appears from these eggs.

cosmological hypothesis.

Scientists on the unknown claim that the first was an egg. And it was brought to Earth from space. Either aliens did this on purpose, or it happened through the most common panspermia, or there was an intersection with one of the parallel worlds. In the course of its wanderings through the Galaxy, the Earth fell into a grandiose cosmic cloud of eggs. As a result, the eggs settled in a hail on all bodies solar system. But since suitable conditions for their reproduction were available only on Earth, then it was its cosmic eggs that were colonized. It is possible that we will also find eggshells on the Moon, Mars and even on asteroids.

This theory is beautiful and tempting, however, it does not answer another important question - where did the eggs come from in space itself ?! After all, even the most ignorant of the last is clear that chickens in outer space they cannot live. And even more so, rush. Therefore, this theory needs further development. Although especially advanced mystics and esotericists claim that the eggs were formed during the Big Bang itself.

Historical interpretation.

It is known that birds (and a chicken is also a bird, although some ignoramuses deny this) are distant relatives dinosaurs. That is, they did not appear on Earth by themselves, but descended from these ancient monsters. And if so, then everything immediately falls into place. Since dinosaurs also reproduced by eggs, the female dinosaur could not lay down a chicken. “And the dinosaur laid a testicle. Yes, not simple, but with chicken inside! Why chicken and not chicken eggs? Well, any fool knows that eggs don't hatch from eggs.

So the egg comes first and the chicken comes second.

Someone will probably object that they say, substitution chicken egg to any other is not a solution to this problem. However! After all, the condition of the problem does not detail whose egg it was! Maybe it was all wood! It hung quietly on a tree, and suddenly a mutation attacked it. And mutations, they are ubiquitous and voracious! From one mutation, a chicken hatched from an egg, from another - an ostrich, from a third - a peacock. What is the change?

Therefore, the dinosaur appeared first, then the egg, then the chicken from the egg, and at the very end, on present stage, there were fools who created a problem out of this.

However, let's finish the skeptics to the end! We can easily refute this argument. So which came first, the egg or the dinosaur?

Let's say the egg comes first. But how and where did it come from here on Earth? (See the Creator Theory and the Cosmological Hypothesis above.) Let's say that the unthinkable happened and the insides of the egg (yolks/whites and other genes) were formed by sticking together in the primordial broth. Then they got out on land, began to chew grass, move on wheels and extract calcium for the shell by chemosynthesis. And this is how they came up with the ridiculous idea to take the shape of an egg and carve it into lathe a shell of calcium, no windows, no doors, and no limbs!? There is nothing to move around on, there is nothing to spoil either. In addition, every cross-counter can roll an egg back and forth with impunity as much as he wants! At least two halves in a row. This is a dead end evolutionary move. On the contrary, all creatures for protection from enemies are overgrown with thorns, thorns, horns, on extreme case tortoise shell, as well as wool to keep warm.

Don't brainstorm for too long. In fact, everything is simple here: the egg has such ideal, smooth mathematical shapes, texture and size only in order to fall out of the dinosaur's ovipositor without obstacles and damage. where it was formed.

So, the dinosaur is primary, and the egg is secondary. Q.E.D. 😎

Philosophical interpretation.

If we assume that the egg was the first, then it is logical to be puzzled by the question: could this egg decide to give birth to a chicken? Decide on your own, with your brains? No, it couldn't. The egg does not have free will. And where does this will come from if the egg has no brains. The fact that he has a program / genetic code instead of brains does not fundamentally change anything. This code also has no will. How can the film itself, for no apparent reason, decide that it needs to start spinning a movie? Here right now!

Moreover, this DNA program does not have any mechanisms to find the shell, to roll it into warm place and then climb inside it. In two weeks, hatch, defeat all enemies and work up the sides to the size of a chicken.

Could the chicken decide to lay an egg? The chicken could. Because the chicken has a brain and free will. Compared to an egg, of course.

Therefore, initially chickens did not carry eggs, but multiplied in some other way. And then one day the chicken came up with a brilliant idea. “But can I imagine myself as an egg? Can! But if I were an egg, could I imagine myself a chicken? No, it could not, because the egg has no mind and imagination. Therefore, if I can imagine myself as an egg, then I think. And if I think, then I exist. And if I exist, then I can lay an egg. And since I can lay an egg, so I will lay it!”

All. The process has begun! The chicken is the cause, the egg is the effect. This is how the steep zigzag of evolution happened - the chicken teaches the eggs, and not the eggs the chicken.

Logical analysis.

If we ask ourselves which came first, the chicken or the egg, we postulate that:
1. chicken and egg are different objects.
2. Up to a certain point in the past, there was no chicken or egg.
3. The chicken and the egg did not appear at the same time.

It follows from the analysis of these initial conditions that it is not explicitly specified that one of the indicated objects originated from the other. That one of the two of them was the root cause, and someone became the effect. Therefore, the chicken could well come from one source, and the egg from a completely different one. Simultaneously or with a gap of billions of years. And even in opposite ends of the universe. (By the way, the great Aristotle believed that the chicken and the egg appeared at the same time) The causal relationship between the chicken and the egg is not set. And the fact that they appeared “not at the same time” does not at all exclude the possibility that this difference in time tends to zero or to infinity. Moreover, it is not determined whether there was a period of time in which these two objects existed simultaneously!

But the most important incident is different. The condition completely ignores the fact that chickens reproduce sexually! And without taking into account the role of the rooster, it is completely pointless to talk about the genesis of the chicken and the egg! By the way, cases have long been known when a rooster remained on for a long time without chickens. And from longing, after a while, he somehow began to lay eggs himself! Therefore, it is absolutely not excluded that the rooster was the first. Then he laid a number of eggs, one of which hatched a chicken.

Thus, taking into account the foregoing, an unambiguous conclusion follows: the task, as an attempt to create logical paradox, is formulated incorrectly, which is why it is completely meaningless.

And although “everyone understands” that a chicken comes from an egg, and an egg from a chicken, however, from the point of view of formal logic, this fact should be adequately reflected in initial conditions. The decision comes only from what is reflected in the conditions, and not from what “everyone understands”.

And now, if we try to formulate the problem taking into account the above remarks, then it will cease to exist. Here is the unexpected, at first glance, result.

Real, everyday, worldly interpretation.

There are two options.
1. If you are puzzled by this question, then you obviously have something wrong with your head.
2. If you were asked this question, it means that you are already tired of everyone with your stupid chatter, and it's time for you to shut up. Like, why are you being clever here, Buridan's donkey? If you are so smart, show yourself in the classics of the genre!

This interpretation is the most exhaustive, and you can throw everything said above out of your head, tea, it is not a trash can.

How it really was.

The first animals to come out of the ocean onto land were amphibians. They reproduce by laying eggs in water. Zoologists believe that caviar is also eggs, only without a hard shell. Amphibian eggs, like fish eggs, do not have a waterproof shell. Therefore, they cannot move far from the water, because on land their eggs dry out quickly. Amphibians gave rise to other animal species. Some of them (including birds) have acquired a double egg shell. The outer is a shell, consisting mainly of calcium carbonate, which provides rigidity. And under the shell - two soft shells that protect from drying out.

The first amphibians appeared 360 million years ago,
and the first birds - 150. Calculate how long it took to create the shell.

Total!

The "chicken or egg" paradox does not exist in nature. And it was invented purely in order to powder our brains.

This question has worried philosophers, scientists and ordinary people for hundreds of years. At first glance, the riddle is truly unsolvable: after all, any chicken came from an egg, which, in turn, was laid by another chicken. The circle closed, the question hung in the air. However, it seems that at last there is one less mystery in the world, and the final answer has been given to this question: the egg did appear first. Moreover, this answer is quite justified both from a scientific and philosophical, and from a purely practical point of view. A special discussion dedicated to solving this problem was attended by a genetic scientist, an expert in the field of philosophy of science and a poultry farm owner.

John Brookfield, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Nottingham, justifies this view as follows: “During the life of an animal, the genetic material remains unchanged. Therefore, the first bird that gradually evolved into what is the modern chicken (apparently this was back in prehistoric times) first existed as an embryo inside an egg.” A living organism hidden in an eggshell has the same DNA as the bird that will hatch from it in the future. From all this we can conclude that in the evolutionary sense, the egg was still the first.

Other experts invited to the debate agreed with these conclusions - Professor David Papineau from the London university college, and chicken farm owner Charles Bournes. David Papineau is a specialist in the philosophy of science. His explanation was even simpler: the first chick came from an egg, so the egg came before the chick.