Which came first —

the chicken or the egg? People ask that as if it’s the quintessentially unanswerable question. But of course the answer is clear: The egg.

     Why? Well, here’s the literal solution: There were eggs — for instance, dinosaur eggs — long before there were chickens. QED.

     Enough of these lawyer tricks, Volokh, you say. Of course the question means “Which came first — the chicken or the chicken egg?” (where “chicken egg” means an egg containing pretty much the same genes that an adult chicken would have).

     Well, then we have the biological solution: A chicken egg will always produce a chicken, since species changes happen at the time of conception, not at the time of birth. If the genes in the fertilized egg made it a chicken egg, then it will produce a chicken. But two non-chickens could produce a chicken egg. That’s the way species change operates — the mixing of genes from two individuals, likely coupled with mutation and other genetic changes, produces an individual with a new genetic pattern that can be said to belong to a new species.

     Of course, this is something of an oversimplification: Species change probably can’t be delineated this precisely (“previous generation, nonchickens; this generation, chickens”). But the question itself assumes that we can somehow distinguish chickens from nonchickens, and that some change will be treated as being enough to make the resulting organism into the first chicken. Biology tells us that this change, whatever it is, will only happen at the time the egg is produced, not at the time the chicken is produced (i.e., the egg is hatched).

     But doesn’t that assume the truth of the theory evolution, some might ask? If that bothers you, I propose a religious solution: In my experience, most creationists are also pro-life — in which case, the egg is a chicken.

     (By the way, here’s an entirely different solution.)