Oh wow, this is much simpler explanation than the obtuse one I use: "1st chicken ever definitely came from an egg but the creature that laid that egg wasn't a chicken."
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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Daddy chicken did
Even if you're talking about chicken eggs specifically it's still the egg first. The first chicken egg would have been laid by a proto chicken
proto chicken
Bro chickens are already loaded with protein, what are you doing?
It's preferable to Zergchicken, trust me.
I wasn't scared before this, so I'm going to do exactly that
I feel like this kinda answer just shows you haven't really thought about the problem in depth.
I feel like this kinda answer just shows you haven’t really thought about the problem in depth.
But is it a chicken egg because it hatches into a chicken or because it is laid by a chicken?
Because it hatches into a chicken, you're thinking of a chicken's egg
It depends on which egg and which chicken you mean exactly.
This is why I say a much more interesting question is what came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?
It entirely depends on your definition of a chicken egg. Is a chicken egg an egg that hatches a chicken, or an egg that is laid by a chicken? If it is an egg that hatches a chicken then the chicken egg came first, but if it is an egg that is laid by a chicken then the chicken came first
If a chicken egg is an egg that hatches into a chicken, then unfertilized chicken eggs would not be chicken eggs. But if you took an alligator egg and transplanted a developing chicken embryo into it, that would become a chicken egg.
You'd get the heuristic "All chickens have hatched from chicken eggs", which sounds pretty elegant.
If a chicken egg is an egg laid by a chicken, then you couldn't reliably say that a chicken egg hatches into a chicken - the heuristic from before would become "Not all chickens have hatched from chicken eggs". And that one, while it feels a bit imprecise, might be closer to what we observe in reality, especially with that Proto-chicken argument. So the Proto-chicken would have laid a Proto-chicken egg, which hatched into a chicken, which laid chicken eggs.
And it would work with the current scientific hijinks like hatching chickens from different eggs or straight from test tubes.
That's a language-dependent ambiguity; this sort of "noun¹ noun²" construction in English is actually rather vague, and it can be used multiple ways:
- material - e.g. fish fillet (the fillet is made of fish)
- purpose - e.g. fish knife (the knife is made to handle fish)
- destination - e.g. fish food (the food goes to the fish)
- inalienable possession - e.g. fish tail (the tail belongs to the fish, and removing it means removing part of the fish)
- alienable possession - e.g. fish bowl (the bowl "belongs" to the fish, but you could give it another bowl)
- etc.
As such I believe that in at least some languages it's probably clear if you refer to chicken egg as "an egg coming from a chicken" or "an egg a chicken is born from". Not that they're going to use it with this expression though.
For reference. @cuerdo@lemmy.world used as an example "my penis":
If I say “my penis”, it is likelier that I am talking about the one attached to me rather than the one I bought in the market.
In Nahuatl both would be distinguished: you'd call your genitals "notepollo" (inalienable possession), and the one you bought "notepol" (alienable possession). (Note: "no-" for the first person. For someone else's dick use "mo-" when speaking with the person, i- when talking about them.)
Just language things, I guess.
TIL I learned to refer to my penises (both of them) in Nahuatl, Thank you!!!
You cannot have a chicken without a chicken egg. And the egg comes first.
It's the paradox of the heap
At some point the pre-chicken will lay a chicken egg and a chicken will be born
If I say "my penis", it is likelier that I am talking about the one attached to me rather than the one I bought in the market.
A chicken egg came before the chicken because it is the same animal and the egg stage is earlier than the adult stage.
Yeah but like where did that chicken come from
TIL the first chicken egg wasn't laid by a chicken
Proto-chicken>chicken>eschato-chicken
Chickens have "evolved" in recent years more than recent centuries
We just keep the chicken name but at what point do they become a different animal.
Evolution is slow and has no definite point in time of "First official example of a 2000s definition of a chicken"
It's similar to the paradox of the heap.
Of course a "chicken" layed the first chicken egg. But if we called that "chicken" a chicken then her egg would be the first chicken egg. Not the one she just layed.
All mutations are birthed by the unmutated.
allegedly
Differently mutated
All animals are mutated, some are more mutated than others
*Magneto is typing*
if you want something crazier, look into ring species. where different species of animals have all their in-between species still alive and mate with each other, but the ones at the extremes cant mate with each other
I've always understood this debate as a veiled religious thing. Chicken = religion, god creates chickens; or Egg = science, animals are products of evolution, and thus naturally the egg must come first.
Idk who the ten people that upvoted this are but godamnit
Edit: if you can see these edits, and how much I can't handle sentence structure, and you are god, and not an egg, pls forgive me
What about a chicken egg?
The rooster came on both.
He came on or became both. Therefore, please shop at Walmart 10% more than you already do. This is not an ad.
So birds and crocodiles had one mother.
They had two dads you bigot.
Okay okay sure, but where did the egg come from if no chicken then?
A junglefowl
You misspelled Wompus Cat
which came first, the platypus or the egg?
This is species appropriation and I'll poison you with my beak so fucking fast dude