Sunday, October 10, 2021

Preface To Eggs: The Chicken & The Egg

(Image from here.)

The picture is from this article which suggest there's a controversy about that question, which came first, the chicken or the egg?  I confess being a bit puzzled by that many years ago when I was young.  Thinking I didn't have the knowledge or brain power to suss it out, & hearing dumb arguments mostly, I put it out of my mind & would only hear it in passing or in songs (like this one, which I must've heard while very, very young).

Some time later, I happened to see a documentary or an interview on television with a biologist.  I don't remember who it was, whether he was famous or not, but someone posed the question to him.  His response was dismissive.  He said, "Eggs evolved millions of years before chickens did."

But the most I looked into it, the more I discovered that people wanted me nuance & focus.  This article on science.org.au seems to have put it best for me.  It concludes, "At the end of the day, the question is something of a false dichotomy. Eggs certainly came before chickens, but chicken eggs did not - you can't have one without the other. However, if we absolutely had to pick a side, based on the evolutionary evidence, we're on Team Egg."

Me too!  Not such a silly riddle after all.

No comments: