sorry for the stupid question, when is it a chicken and not the yoke inside the egg?
443522
It has the potential to be a chicken when it is fertilised (which most eggs aren't). It becomes a chicken when it hatches.
136554
The question that has perplexed us for multiple postings.\n\nThe egg came first, The first chicken came from an egg from something that was not quite a chicken.  Please see this handy movie for more details:
61851
the chicken.. because without the chicken... there would be no egg
41478
Which came first - the chicken or the egg? \n\n"The chicken" came first - in the sentence of the question. If the question is phrased differently, the answer is different.\n\n!
267261
Which came first - the chicken or chicken egg? \n\n"The chicken" came first - in the sentence of the question. \n\nIf the question is phrased differently, the answer is different.
1041531
Oh no, not this question again!\n Ray wrote to this question:\n\n3 weeks ago\n \nBest Answer - Chosen By Voters\n\nIf you're talking about the chicken egg, it has to be the chicken. if you're talking about eggs in general, it has to be the egg. Dinosaurs had eggs.
221313
Chickens evolved from non-chickens through small changes caused by the mixing of male and female DNA or by mutations to the DNA that produced the zygote. These changes and mutations only have an effect at the point where a new zygote is created. That is, two non-chickens mated and the DNA in their new zygote contained the mutation(s) that produced the first true chicken. That one zygote cell divided to produce the first true chicken. \n\nPrior to that first true chicken zygote, there were only non-chickens. The zygote cell is the only place where DNA mutations could produce a new animal, and the zygote cell is housed in the chicken's egg. So, the egg must have come first. \n\nSo it is Egg technically. (But that Egg is not a chicken egg) \nbut in ur question if the Egg is "chicken egg" then obviously then it is Chicken.
55214
This one cracks me up.  Hmm.. what came first, the chicken or the egg.  I say the chicken.. Adam and Eve were never babies so the chicken had to come first and since they were never inside a womb.. no, I don't believe they did have belly buttons.
930201
The egg I would say. Actually this simplification doesn't stand up. \nThe answer is neither and both. If you look at fossil records, eggs existed all of the way back and when did a chicken actually become a chicken? \nAsk yourself. Did a chicken become a chicken, when a dinosaur gained feathers or when it lost its teeth and grew a beak? and is that why most amphibians taste like chicken and lay eggs?
63835
Scientifically speaking, the egg must have come first because there was a non-chicken animal that evolved into a chicken, and the only way for that non-chicken animal to have evolved into a chicken is if there was a mutation during meiosis (reproduction). So the non-chicken animal would have laid an egg which became a chicken.
288571
People will keep asking this question... (677 times and counting)\nhttp://answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result;_ylt=ArqSG_s0jG4ok1r1mx8sEIIjzKIX?p=chicken+or+the+egg\n\nHere's my answer, cut and paste from my answer to the same question asked the other day:\n\nThere were eggs long before chickens.\n\nDinosaurs laid eggs, for example, and birds evolved from dinosaurs.\n\nGuess what, a chicken is a bird.\n\nWhatever bird chickens evolved from laid eggs, so wherever you draw the line in the sand and say "here was the first chicken", well, that chicken had a mother who laid the egg.\n\nEggs came before chickens.
211980
....and goes ROAST??\n\nor the answer to egg-chicken ques....\n\nThe modern chicken is generally believed to be a descendant of "Archaeopteryx", the oldest known bird. This 150 million ear old resident of the jurassic period laid eggs, and at some point of time, evolved into an animal that was one generation away from being a proper chicken. This creature would have produced the egg out of qwhich the first chicken emerged...the EGG came first.
217089
Neither, because:\n\ncan chickens fly?\ncan eggs fly?\n\nyou have to look at it from all angles ;-)
426668
The egg, no doubt about it.\n\nA chicken is only a clever mean of transportation and reproduction used by and egg.\n\nYou see in early days when life was beginning - in a pond. The being called egg was like an amoeba - a jelly like thing. When earth started to solidify the ponds started to dry up. Now what this thing called egg would do? Either somehow survive the dry periods or die a miserable death. Obviously it did not choose to die so it did something very clever. It formed a shell around it to keep moisture and other content inside. And when pond would filled up with water this shell would dissolve and so on. Now dry periods started to get longer and longer. There therefore was no other option for the egg other than to be able to leave the pond and find a new one. So over the ages it hatched out a detailed plan that would enable it to move around and stay alive and dry as well. That plan eventually took a form that today we know as a chicken. \nMoral of the story: Eat the chicken but remember the egg and the difficulties it faced to get the meat to your wasteful dinner table.
582612
You mean ...what came first...Chicken or Egg...?
1031641
It's an egg for sure. Wasn't that a riddle in "The Hobbit"?
598261
The egg came first.  At some time in the evolutionary development of the chicken as we know it, there was some previous creature that was not quite a chicken.  Let's call this a "proto-chicken".  In the ovary of the proto-chicken, which is always subject to some small amount of mutation, it carries all the genes that would make a proto-chicken, but it gets mutated to form what we think of as a chicken.  The egg is laid, and when it hatches, it will become a chicken.  Thus, the proto-chicken which laid the egg is not a chicken, but the egg will produce a chicken, so the egg came first.