What Came First? 🐣 The Chicken Or The Egg? 🐥

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Proto-Chickens And Mutations?

Many, many years ago, people say that there was a chicken-like bird. This creature was very genetically near to a chicken, but it wasn't actually a chicken yet. We will refer to the ancestor of the chicken as the proto-chickens.

A so-called proto-hen laid an egg. A proto-rooster fertilised it, but when the genes from the proto-chicken parents were fusing, they joined in a new way. This caused a mutation and, by chance, made a new species of bird. The chicken.

All Depends On How We Define Each Term

We can assume that there wasn't a point where a chicken or proto-chicken could not mate with its parents. It could not mate with their more remote ancestors (e.g. great-great-great-great-grandparent) for they would be long dead.

There is not one chicken that is completely identical to another. Therefore, the definition of a chicken is quite hazy. This fuzziness means that whether or not a proto-chicken could be classed as a chicken depends on your definition of chickenhood. This is arbitrary.

There may be an instance where a creature that isn't classified as a chicken will have a child that will be classified as a chicken, but where do we draw that line?

What Are Your Thoughts?

When you have your definitions for proto-chickens and chicken, only then will you have your own, unique result.

If you have a definition of what a chicken is and isn't, then you can determine your main chicken species. After that, you can figure out which ancestral proto-chicken species created the chicken species.

Everybody will have different results. There are many different scientific definitions of chickens and their ancestors, but they have been disputed throughout the years. If you want to find out more, I would recommend researching the topic.