This has been my go-to answer for years now. Eggs existed before chickens did. You could say they Eggsisted first.
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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that's not the question though. you're going against grice's maxims.
Chickens are dinosaurs
This feels like solving an impossible puzzle only to fall right back into existential despair when you start thinking about it, because an egg is also not just an egg in the same way that not all egg layers are chickens. So if we can remove the chicken from the equation we also have to remove the chicken egg. Else we are cheating. And then we are right back where we started and the chicken and egg question still stands undefeated.
God creates eggs. Eggs create dinosaurs. God kills dinosaurs. Eggs inherit the Earth
edit I did it. I forgot the chicken
OK but what did the first egg laying animal come out of.
Some non-egg laying animal gave birth to an egg laying animal due to a beneficial mutation. So the "chicken" (or rather, any egg laying animal) came first.
I disagree, i think a chicken is the animal that comes from an egg and then lays an egg (to start the cycle anew).
If the first animal you call a chicken isnt hatched from an egg then i think its not a chicken, but a predecessor.
That chicken's parent laid an egg though so it wasn't the first egg laying animal.
I’m laughing my ass off rn because I’m imagining this process happening today like imagine giving birth to your daughter the normal way and she gives birth by laying eggs
Not exactly, they produced eggs just not with the hard outer shell built for dry air filled environment. THATS where the next land dwelling being came from.
Yeah but in the same way we extend the discussion to be "egg laying creature" instead of chicken, we can extend it to "any sort of shelled baby" from egg and the logic still holds.
eggish
Everyone here seems to be missing the point of the question. The chicken isn't the key point. It stands in for all egg laying animals. To rephrase the question: how is it possible that an early species was able to develop egg laying abilities, considering the problem of that animal not having been born from an egg? I suspect the real answer has something to do with fish ...
- Shells are soft gloopy things laid in lakes
- Evolutionary advantage: Eggs laid on the edge of lakes away from water predators
- Evolutionary advantage: Harder eggs survive longer further out of water
- Evolutionary advantage: Harder land eggs give rise to amphibous/land animals
- Evolutionary advantage: Amphibous/land animals lay land eggs
- etc.
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."
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The rooster came first
A chicken egg came before the chicken because it is the same animal and the egg stage is earlier than the adult stage.
Depends on your definition of "chicken egg". Language is defined by the way people use it and nobody (other than perhaps a few people in this thread) has ever bothered defining what a chiclen egg is: Is it an egg laid by a chicken or is it an egg that contains a chicken
When you go to the supermarket you call that a chicken egg because it was laid by a chicken, even if the egg is incapable of ever containing a chicken (at least from what I know you can't grow chickens from supermarket eggs) So arguably that means eggs laid by chickens are chicken eggs. But nobody has ever had to define whether an egg containing a chicken is also a chicken egg, even if the egg was not laid by a chicken. So if you don't define an egg laid by a proto-chicken to be a chicken egg then you would say that the chicken came before the egg.
The egg is the chicken at an early stage of development.
TIL the first chicken egg wasn't laid by a chicken
Well...yeah, that's how evolution works. Answer is still the Egg.
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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?
Ye but if you boost the protein you can sell it as a health food!
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I've always interpreted this as more of a metaphorical question.
However, this general response is where I usually take things if pushed for an answer. Meaning, egg laying species existed for hundreds of millions of years before chickens and chickens evolved from egg laying species, so the egg came first.
A lot of people try to interpret this on the micro scale view: The idea that there was one specific event (place, time, individual) where a non-chicken laid the first egg that hatched out to became the first chicken.
The reality of the situation is counterintuitive, though. Life, nature, and even taxonomy are so much more complex that this situation. It can be hard to conceptualize, but there literally never was a case where a non-chicken laid an egg, and the resulting offspring was the first chicken ever.
The species concept really only applies on a population level (barring exceptions like cases where there's literally only 1 known living individual remaining of a soon to be extinct species). And furthermore, taxonomy is an artificial, human concept -- nature does not abide -- and a bit of an art at that. Even if we could somehow scale back in time and view every individual in the chicken lineage as far back as we desire and in much detail as we desired, there would be no consensus on where in that mess chickens emerged from non-chickens.
So, this is one of those cases where I would actually advise -- don't think too hard about it or take it too seriously and accept the question for its metaphorical nature.
And there is evolution to take note of too. The chickens that were alive back then could look very different to the chickens we have today. We say the word "chicken", and we think of the chickens that you see at farms, or sometimes in the wild, with no thought at all to the details. True, one could argue that chickens have not undergone any evolution, and were as they are today, but there are several flaws in that reasoning. First, every animal has been a certain way, but, as time passes and their environment changes, they must change as well. Here's an example of natural selection, for those who are not as well versed in the matter of evolution.
Say there are white squirrels. They have lived there for hundreds of years, and therefore adapted to accommodate the forest. One day, a paper mill is built next to the forest where they reside, and spews pollution out. Over time, the trees of the forest, once elm white, are not soot black. The white squirrels are then hunted because they can no longer blend in with their environment. Soon, black squirrels are born. They can now blend in with the trees, and are killed less often. The white squirrels are hunted until there is no more left.
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All animals use eggs to procreate. Previous to that, procreation must've been through mitosis. If today's fauna still used mitosis for procreation, the process would be uglier than it already is
I fool-proofed the question..."Which came first, the egg of a chicken, or the chicken?". And you can't say they use eggs in dinosaur shaped pasta. /s
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