• @lowleveldata
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    7729 days ago

    At which point does an egg of non-chicken become an egg of chicken?

    • @[email protected]
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      5329 days ago

      Is a “chicken egg” an egg laid by a chicken, or an egg that will hatch into a chicken?

      • @[email protected]
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        4929 days ago

        It’s an egg that will hatch into a chicken, since the “first” chicken must have hatched out of an egg that was laid and fertilized by two “non-chickens” whose DNA combined together to make a full-blown chicken. Of course it wasn’t actually just one egg, but really, no matter how you think about it, the egg came first.

        • @[email protected]
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          429 days ago

          Can mutations that occurred during life be transmitted to offspring? Biology classes were a long time ago.

          • @[email protected]
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            29 days ago

            That depends on what you mean.

            Did a giraffe stretch its neck longer and longer, and then pass that long-necked gene onto its kids? No.

            Can an embryo that gets a random mutation while developing in the egg/womb pass it on to their children? Yes.

            This gets a bit more complicated if you really dig into it, though. Environment does change the expression of genes, and that particular sequence of genes that have been activated/shut-off/whatever can be passed on to children too.

            Hence why children who were born to two shorter parents will often grow much taller than them if given much better nutrition. Or why obesity often shows up chronically in families that were poor or had limited access to healthier foods in other ways; their bodies had adapted to grab and store every extra calorie they could to guard against starvation, and unfortunately shutting that gene expression off naturally takes multiple generations.

        • @[email protected]
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          329 days ago

          I agree, and I’ve made the same argument. It’s perfectly valid, Unless the egg belongs to the creature who laid it, instead of the creature that hatched from it.

          If the egg in question is a “proto-chicken’s egg” because it was laid by a proto-chicken, then the chicken would have come before the chicken egg.

          • @[email protected]
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            729 days ago

            No it wouldn’t. If we’re going to talk about the creation of chickens as happening at a single instance of egg-laying, the two progenitors of said first chicken would be proto-chickens whose DNA combined in the fertilized egg to make, for the first time ever, a chicken. Yes, it’s a chicken egg, because it contains a chicken, but it’s also a proto-chicken’s egg because it wasn’t laid by a full chicken. It couldn’t have been, they didn’t exist yet.

            • @[email protected]
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              529 days ago

              There is no question as to the biology. The first egg that would hatch a chicken was laid by a proto-chicken. The genetic mutation that delineated chicken from proto-chicken first existed in that egg.

              By your argument, the status of the egg is dependent on what it contains.

              Suppose that proto-chicken pair laid an egg. And instead of it hatching into a chicken, I ate it. This egg never became a chicken; it was only an egg. It couldn’t be a chicken egg, because it never contained a chicken. It could only be a proto-chicken egg.

              The egg that the chicken hatched from only became a chicken egg once there was a chicken inside it. The chicken egg, therefore, could not precede the chicken.

              • @[email protected]
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                329 days ago

                No, if a chicken could hatch out of it, regardless of whether or not it actually did, it’s a chicken egg. Nothing else could hatch out of it and it didn’t somehow cease to have been an egg just because it doesn’t hatch.

                • @[email protected]
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                  229 days ago

                  it didn’t somehow cease to have been an egg just because it doesn’t hatch.

                  Correct. But, it was an egg laid by a proto-chicken; it is a proto-chicken egg.

                  Our proto-chicken couple also laid an egg that would have become a “Shicken”, if I hadn’t eaten it first. But, because there was never a “Shicken”, there could never be a “Shicken” egg; the egg was only a proto-chicken egg.

                  • AnonStoleMyPants
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                    229 days ago

                    No, the shicken egg was a shicken egg even prior to you eating it. The act of giving it a name is irrelevant. The proto-chicken could’ve lain a hundred eggs, each becoming a new “chicken”. If 99 of them die off and are never born then that does not mean they didn’t exist. It just means they did not exist in a way where we could’ve given them a name.

          • @[email protected]
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            229 days ago

            Feel like any kind of mutation that turns the pre chicken into the proto chicken happens at birth, if the pre chicken had a mutated offspring, I’d wager the egg is mutated significantly from what a normal pre chicken egg would be, since after all it has to support a proto chicken, not a pre chicken.

        • @[email protected]
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          1029 days ago

          Amy is a chicken. Amy lays an egg. Brenda is a chicken. Brenda hatched from the egg Amy laid. The egg in question is clearly a chicken’s egg, but is it Amy’s egg, or Brenda’s egg?

          • @[email protected]
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            229 days ago

            It was Amy’s egg that Brenda inherited, so now it’s Brenda’s egg. So the OG egg was Amy’s.

            • @[email protected]
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              29 days ago

              So, it doesn’t become a Chicken’s egg until Brenda has come into existence. Brenda being the chicken. The chicken has to exist for the egg to become a Chicken’s egg.

              The first chicken egg is the egg that Brenda hatched from, but it didn’t become a chicken egg until Brenda was a chicken and not just a (proto-chicken) egg.

              • @[email protected]
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                229 days ago

                Right and wrong. It was a chicken’s egg when Amy laid it, but it was a chicken egg when Brenda was hatched. So yes, the chicken has to exist for the first chicken’s egg, but the first chicken hatched from a chicken egg, that was not a chicken’s egg.

                To clarify, I’m assuming that in this case Amy was the first evolution of the chicken, therefore she laid the first chicken’s egg that was the second chicken egg, bevause her parents weren’t chickens, so what was laid wasn’t a chicken’s egg until Amy hatched. Schrodinger’s egg if you will.

                • @[email protected]
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                  129 days ago

                  Amy is a proto-chicken. Her offspring, Brenda, is the first creature containing the mutation that distinguishes chickens from proto-chickens. Brenda is the first chicken.

                  Amy’s egg couldn’t be a chicken egg because there was no such thing as a chicken when she laid it. There would be no such thing as a chicken until Brenda existed, at which time the egg that would become Brenda also became a chicken egg.

                  The chicken egg could not have come first. The first chicken egg was laid by something that was not quite a chicken, but it didn’t become a chicken egg until it had developed into a chicken.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    129 days ago

                    You established right away in your first post that Amy is a chicken. That means she came from a chicken egg, but it wasn’t a chicken’s egg until Amy was a chicken. Until the hatch it was her parent’s egg, whatever species they may have been.

                    I think we’re saying the same thing, but in my version, Amy was the first chicken hatched from non chicken parents, and laid the first chicken’s egg, birthing Brenda.

                    In the end, chicken came first, which in turn made the egg, a chicken egg, and coincidentally that chicken’s egg.

        • @[email protected]
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          1029 days ago

          Incorrect, a “chicken’s egg” would be an egg in the possession of a chicken, which would be the egg a chicken lays. The “first chicken” did not hatch out of an egg laid by a chicken because they didn’t exist.

          • @[email protected]
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            529 days ago

            You’re right. I just realized that I typed the opposite of what I meant. And then in another comment said what you did thinking I was defending my og opinion. I’m all over the place this morning.

      • @[email protected]
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        329 days ago

        I feel like my comment in another thread is even more relevant here:

        I have no direct knowledge about that, but if we take the analogy of the egg (shell, albumen and yolk sack) being the life-support system of the embryo during gestation, in humans the placenta would be a big part of that, and exactly whose body it is part of its not simple (from what I remember both mother and child contribute cells, and the ‘plan’ for building it comes from the father’s genes). So maybe for chickens it could be ambiguous whether the shell ‘belongs’ to the laying generation or the hatching one. Seems like mostly a human taxonomy distinction to make anyway, obviously it’s in between the two, but we like to draw the line somewhere.

      • @[email protected]
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        329 days ago

        I think it’s an egg laid by a chicken. Unfertilized eggs laid by chickens that will never become chickens are still chicken eggs.

        • @[email protected]
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          129 days ago

          That’s about where I got to as well. A proto-chicken’s egg that contains the genetic code for a chicken doesn’t become a chicken egg if I eat it first. At best, the creature has to have become a chicken before the surrounding egg can be described as a chicken egg, which means that the chicken has to come first (or simultaneously). The egg cannot come first.

        • @[email protected]
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          029 days ago

          We’re not talking about eggs laid by chickens, we’re talking about eggs laid by the things that weren’t quite chickens, but the eggs of which contain chickens, due to a novel DNA combination.

          • @[email protected]
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            28 days ago

            The question posed is what is a chicken egg? Is it an egg from which a chicken hatches or an egg which a chicken lays? I’d argue it’s the latter. Because we already consider eggs from which no chicken could hatch but that a chicken laid, chicken eggs.

      • manucode
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        629 days ago

        Unless you define a chicken egg as an egg of which a chicken is born (or of which a chicken could be born)

    • Rhaedas
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      429 days ago

      Wherever humans draw the line. The meme uses the assumption that there is a clear change from earlier species to later descendants, when it reality it is a continuous change of many characteristics each time an individual reproduces and spreads their genetics. It’s the flaw of the missing link argument.