this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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A chicken egg came before the chicken because it is the same animal and the egg stage is earlier than the adult stage.
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.
The proto-chicken was a mutant Red Junglefowl. Just like a proto-dog was a mutant wolf.
You do not get a Red Junglefowl laying a 2000s definition of a chicken egg. You get a Red Junglefowl laying an egg with a mutation that that "Red Junglefowl" will pass on.
Every generation the Red Junglefowl becomes closer to the 2000s definition of a chicken.
It wasn't a "mutant" in the sense that one Red Junglefowl was born to create the chicken egg what we know as a 2000s definition of a chicken.
Yeah, there's never a hard dividing line between a species and its immediate predecessor. Merely a gradual chain of mutations that eventually results in distinct populations. If those populations can't successfully interbreed even if transported to meet, they're different species. The definitions for asexually reproducing organisms are even more fuzzy. This concept that taxonomy doesn't have fixed divisions confuses a lot of anti-evolutionists.