From: utzoo!decvax!duke!harpo!npoiv!alice!rabbit!wolit Newsgroups: net.misc Title: Re: A Chicken/Egg problem Article-I.D.: rabbit.665 Posted: Fri Aug 6 11:26:06 1982 Received: Sun Aug 8 08:03:01 1982 Marsh Gosnell's remark ("A chicken is an egg's way of preserving itself") may have been intended to be humorous, but it is an idea that is not without merit. You can get an interesting perspective on the "purpose" of life by looking at some members of the insect world who carry this philosophy to an extreme: in many cases the adult form of the organism is in no way dominant, in terms of size, lifespan, or energy expenditure, but exists solely for the purpose of mating (once!) to produce eggs. Adult Mayflies, for example, live for only a few hours (out of a year-long life cycle) and neither feed nor travel very far from where they emerged. The larval form is the one that does most of the "living" as we know it (except for sexual activity). The adults seem sort of like detachable gonads (see earlier discussions in net.jokes.limericks.q).