 CNN:It's a question that has baffled scientists, academics and pub bores through the ages: What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg.
Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal's life.
Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg. I'm so glad we got that sorted out. Did they get paid for figuring this out? So, where did that first egg come from? It is a non-sensical and misleading question, as the chicken and the egg are part of the same system. Even without that, their logic is flawed. It is a lot more likely that some animal by some evolutionary accident will depose some of its genetic material somewhere in such a way that it can grow into a new animal than it is that a fully programmed egg somehow happened. Eggs don't do very much on their own. Anyway, I'm already confusing myself, so I should probably have stayed with the thought that it isn't a valid question.
[ Knowledge | 2006-05-30 23:42 | | PermaLink ] More >
|
