The chicken or the egg causality dilemma is commonly stated as "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" To ancient philosophers, the question about the first chicken or egg also evoked the questions of how life and the universe in general began.
Wikipedia
When asking the question, "Which came first: the chicken or the egg?" one may be drawn into a philosophical conundrum. It may go like this:
“If the chicken came first, then where did it come from, having no egg from which it hatched?”
“If the egg came first, then what laid it, having no chicken to lay?”
In the times of the ancients this seemed to be a very good question. Perhaps one that could not be answered. It seemed to create a paradox: one cannot exist without the other; then how can either exist at all?
The answer to this paradox suggests that one or the other, or both, had to have sprung into existence in some sort of creation event. Of course nobody alive today believes in anything quite as ridiculous as a creation event, save for a few of the most simple of our kind.
What, then, could be the answer?
Well, these are enlightened times and the answer is very simple. If you struggle at any point along the way during this explanation then please do take a long, hard look in the mirror.
As with all living things on our planet, the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) has been subject to some form of Darwinian evolution. In the case of domestic animals they have been bred selectively by people to increase the characteristics that are desirable. However, let us pretend it happened naturally...
When a mommy junglefowl and a daddy junglefowl love each other very very much... they have wild sex. It is believed that the ancestors of the domestic chicken are the red and grey junglefowl. The exact details of the cross-breeding aren't really all that important as it immediately answers the question posed in the beginning.
Q. Which came first: the chicken or the egg?
A. As the domestic chicken is a cross-breed of the red (Gallus gallus) and grey (Gallus sonneratii) junglefowl, and the red and grey junglefowl reproduce by laying eggs, then the domestic chicken had to have hatched from an egg laid by a female junglefowl. Her colour is not important.
So there we have it. Simple. Logical. Answered. The chicken, which is a cross-breed of two junglefowl, had to have hatched from an egg created by its two parents. The egg did indeed come first. The case has been cracked and the gooey innards are laid bare.
Ah, yes, but... what about the parent species... which came first: the Gallus or the egg?
All birds, including the genus Gallus evolved from lizards around the time of the dinosaurs. Indeed their ancestors could be said to be the dinosaurs. Lizards, like birds, lay eggs. So the egg still came first. We could regress with this question all the way back to the very first egg - now that is an interesting question!
If you really are new to this subject then, as always, you should start out on the Wikipedia page, which should lead you on to more interesting articles.
