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