From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!esquire!nrh Newsgroups: net.misc Title: Re: A Chicken/Egg problem Article-I.D.: esquire.379 Posted: Fri Aug 6 10:18:32 1982 Received: Sun Aug 8 08:09:03 1982 References: mi-cec.125 Irresistable. Without changing your definition, define a chicken as that which can interbreed (productively!) with chickens. Ignoring a lot of metaphysical stuff about whether the newly produced animal can be called a chicken if there are no other chickens of its caliber, and assuming that it is a chicken because it could interbreed with modern chickens, we have trouble. The problem is that if the egg came first, then what does one call the eggs of the creatures that the (first?) chicken breeds with? Remember, if they can fertilize this chicken, they are chickens-- er -- roosters that are of the chicken's species. If there were no such inter-fertile animals at the time of the emergence of the chicken, then either they appeared (does that sound likely?) at about the same time, or there are today NO CHICKENS. Thus there is no "first egg", and for that matter, no first chicken. Yours for no chickens, Nat Howard