Do chickens produce eggs to make the next generation of chickens, or do eggs construct chickens that will then produce the next generation of eggs?

The chicken wants to reproduce. If there is no male around to fertilize it though only an infertile egg will come out. This is what is on your plate for breakfast.

Let’s not.

If you phrase it like this, the answer is both.. When an egg is fertilized, genes get passed on by the zygotes through recombination and mutation, ending up with a chick that’s similar or different to the parents, depending on how the genes play out and express themselves, and also whether there were any significant mutations. Then, this chick may grow up to have offspring, to which it then passes on its particular genetic scheme.

If you ask ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg’, the answer is the egg.

Obviously a strong central government produces farmers who will raise healthy chickens to feed more workers with nutritious eggs, so that they can better support the government.

@CyanoticWasp So ae you saying it’s all a communist plot?

Whoever came first is smoking the cigarette.

@MissAnthrope Good answer and interesting screen name. Thanks.

@CyanoticWasp I thought this discussion might lead in some interesting directions, but statism certainly wasn’t one aI had anticipated.

@gailcalled Ha! I’ve never seen either a chicken or an egg smoking a cigarette, so I am still in the dark. :-)

@janbb oh, no, not at all. But it is statist. And anyway, it’s for your own good.

I believe the chicken is its own devine architect.

@gailcalled Why Miss Gail, what a saucy remark! I’m bearnaised at you.

The poultry farmers are the ones controlling the future of the next generation of chicken and eggs.

@janbb: Not really saucy. A near-miss. Shallot come to pass that you and I will soon become exhausted?

Neither. Their is no desire. Genes are selected, by survival, and it is the genes that construct both the chicken and the egg to pass themselves on, but they do not do it from desire of any kind, they are more like a computer programmed to reproduce itself, but programmed by natural selection rather than conscious act. The only desire is the desire to have sex produced in the chicken by the genes, but the chicken has no interest in the outcome of the sex.

@gailcalled @janbb do you mean egg-sauceted?

@Trillian And just what are you doing over the hollandaise?

Thought I’d find a warm place and get fried if I can manage not to get cracked in the meantime. Omlette you know for sure later.

@janbb and @Trillian I’m not too chicken to join in this hen party of yours, but your poppers really should’ve taught you to control these runny puns. I tried to hold fire until I saw the whites of your eyes. Here’s hoping this is the last word on the topic; the yolk’s on you. Nest ce pas?

@CyanoticWasp You have egg all over face, you know.

@janbb you’ve been cooped up too much this winter. You should get out more. Don’t be a rue-ster. Now, beat it.

Oy with the puns already.

@MissAnthrope True – @CyanoticWasp ‘s pun are pretty oy-ful!

Well, in my defense, I was reading about the Obamas’ giant cock in another thread, and I guess it set me off somehow.

@CyanoticWasp That’s nothing to crow about!

@janbb now you’re just raven.

—@CyanoticWasp bird-brain!

@CyanoticWasp that will be quite en-oeuf from you.

@janbb & @Trillian I’m glad that you two chicks have finally come out of your shells. If I had a gander of any this coming—and with my eagle eyes, I should have spotted owl of it—I surely would have ducked. But I am a gentleman (insert joke about giant rooster here), so I will let you have the last bird word now. Goose me one last time, before I wren for my life. Let osprey.

—Doe not encage emu even further. Rheally. Ostrich in time saves nine. Plover me over in the clover. I may sic my avocet on you since you’re all loon-ie-tunes, even that three-petaled flower who speaks French. which does not make me quail.

@gailcalled & @CyanoticWasp I surrender. you’ve got me oopehr a barrel, and there is a ringing…ah it’s the cellular..mytosis have split and formed two new groups. I hate to be divisive, so I bow out to your genius.
It’s been my distinct pleasure and I include @janbb. Touche to you all, until next we meet!

@Trillian: Nene. No meet eaters in my nest. I’m relieved to stop railing.

Sweet holy moly, why would anyone think the egg has anything to do with the next generation of chickens? If one follows the logic that embryos and fetuses have nothing to do with the next generation of humans as in the fact they are mere hunks of tissue the egg is just whatever and if you smashed them all chickens would still happen somehow.

@Hypocrisy_Central I wasn’t trying to launch a debate on abortion.

@ETpro Neither was I just pointing out the logical similarities, that eggs must have little to do with chickens, so somehow there will always be chickens if you smashed all the eggs.

@Hypocrisy_Central If you like fried chicken, don’t test your theory.