WHAT WAS FIRST?

A scientist, a philosopher and a chicken farmer believe they have solved one of the oldest and popular riddles of humanity: what was first, the chicken or the egg? They say that the answer is egg, as reported Friday by the British newspaper The Times.

In short, this is his argument: the genetic material is transformed during the life of the animal, so the first bird that in the course of evolution became what we now call a chicken first existed as an embryo inside an egg.

Professor John Brookfield, a specialist in genetics at the evolution of the University of Nottingham (England), who raised the riddle, said that things were for him quite clear. The living organism inside the egg had the same DNA as the animal in later to become, as "the first living thing which we can safely qualify member of that species is the first egg.

For his part, David Papineau, an expert on philosophy of science at King's College London, agreed with his colleague, the first chicken came from an egg, and it is a mistake to think that the first chicken egg was a mutant produced by parents other species. "It's a chicken egg if its interior is a chicken," Papineau said, adding in hypothetical plan: "If a kangaroo put an egg, and he come out an ostrich, ostrich egg would not babysitting."

The newspaper quoted Charles Bourns, a farmer and president of an organism in the poultry sector, who would also contribute to the debate: "The eggs existed before the birth of the first chick. Of course, maybe they did not have the look of today" .