Scientists Reveal a Shocking Solution to The Chicken or Egg Paradox
Life on Earth may have developed the ability to form embryos even before it grew the very first animals.
It's always the egg because the thing that laid what we consider a genetic chicken egg wasn't an animal that we consider a genetic chicken. Mutations happen in utero or whatever it's called when a baby is growing in an egg
Article takes it further.
It's not egg before chicken
It's egg before multicellular life.
Which is groundbreaking and is pretty shocking.
This just seems like another example of a great scientific article, that just had a random clickbait headline thrown on it by the editor or maybe some intern to generate clicks.
As others have said, this is a side discussion inspired by the headline but not really related to the article.
That said, there is no proto-chicken that laid a chicken egg or a chicken hatching out of a proto-chicken egg. There was no "first chicken." Populations evolve, not individuals. Let's not confuse a de novo mutation with evolution. Evolution is a change in allele frequencies over time, and speciation is reproductive isolation of populations experiencing allele frequency shifts.
There are still population-wide polymorphisms in humans that are present in gorillas but have been fixed in chimpanzees. Populations of proto-chickens gradually evolved into chickens, but if there were a hard line to define the distinction (like the wavelength where orange ends), then there would have been a long time of proto-chickens and chickens interbreeding and their descendents oscillating back and forth between the two definitions over generations.
I also think the chicken or egg question isn't great and agree that it evolved over a long span of time, multiple times. The oscillation between the proto species and species is really interesting to think about and makes a lot of sense. Thanks for your insight.
I hear you and actually subscribe to your magazine. But…
Is your chicken-zero growing inside a chicken egg, or is it growing in a proto-chicken-thingo™ egg? I agree the thing growing will be born as the worlds first chicken and then grow its own eggs but what do we call the egg it’s in?
Is the egg named after the thing it hatches? Or, is the egg named after the thing that made the egg? Which might be the same as asking, is it called a “chicken egg” or “chicken’s egg” … or… both?
I guess I’ll need to actually read the research paper to find out.
Yeah that title is written by someone who's not understood evolutionary mechanics.
I have no sympathy for this pseudo science bullshit title game.
You should try reading more than just headlines...
Because people who only read headlines, are the ones to blame for these clickbait headlines even on genuine scientific articles.
In all likelihood the author had nothing to do with the headline, and the only reason the headline is there is so the article gets shared by people who won't click talking about how dumb it is.
And then the few who actually read articles correct them.
More comments mean the post gets seen more, and people talking about how the article isn't as bad as the headline gets more to click on it.
You're the reason they have to use shit headlines, and they're exploiting your behavior to compensate for it.
It's honestly genius, but my guess is you're going to get mad they're able to predict people like you so well.
Man these “science communication” websites have become really clickbaity and exaggerate everything with barely any critical lens.
It was actually a guy named Greg who came first.
He got gregnant and the rest is history.
history.gregstory.
ftfy.
Multicellular animal organisms all start their lives the same way. Two zygotes merge and fuse
I hate to nitpick but asexual reproduction does not require two zygotes.
Asexual reproduction is a type of reproduction that does not involve the fusion of gametes or change in the number of chromosomes.
Those are examples of far-fetched, never observed things that do not happen with any frequency that can be measured. It's so rare, in fact, that a genetic trait would be able to be discerned because there would never be a divergent genetic material.
I don't think that's what the article is suggesting.
Asexual reproduction has been observed, measured, studied and is fairly well understood.
The specific claim that all multicellular life starts with two zygotes merging is incorrect. While not the main thrust of the article it is wrong.
Your additional claims are simply absurd and you could spend some minimal effort to understand asexual reproduction before making ignorant claims.
Here I will give you a place to start: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=asexual+reproduction+in+animals&oq=asexual+rep
I'm shocked! 🤯🫨
Just kidding, I ignored the headline and read the article. It really is interesting science. I had to run to Wikipedia to reference a bunch of terms, though. I've paid only limited attention to biology at this level. Haha. For the record though, I'm not shocked. 😏
