On Thu, 20 Jun 1996, Dennis Paulson wrote:
> But then again, there's that age-old conundrum of which hatched first,
> the chicken or the egg.

(to be read with a good dose of humor):
Well clearly the egg came first! Eggs evolved long before birds,
depending on how you want to define it. Amniotic eggs first arriving with
reptilians, bird eggs evolved long before the galliforms. Unless you
limit it to a chicken vs. chicken egg question, then the chicken came
first, since the chicken embryo was formed prior to the eggs formation
inside the hen. But I'm sure there is a faction of chickens which
vehemently oppose this view, saying the chicken doesn't really exist until
it's hatched. No doubt chicken society is split over this issue, of
whether the chicken is a chicken when it's still in the egg.

:)

-------------
Michael R. Smith
Univ. of Washington, Seattle
whimbrel at u.washington.edu
http://salmo.cqs.washington.edu/~wagap/mike.html