HIGH SCHOOL JOURNALISM: Who won the race?

MONONA - Today's teenagers spend a lot of time on the internet.

I was recently watching videos on YouTube when I came across a video that talked about the age old question: “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

Now this question has had many people thinking. It has perplexed humanity from as early as the Ancient Greeks.

So which came first: the chicken or the egg?

If we take the question literally we can see that egg-laying mammals came around long before chickens. In fact, it was about 340 million years ago, so technically the egg came first. So this question should really be worded as “the chicken or the chicken egg?” So if a chicken is born from an egg, where did the egg come from? The simple answer would be from another chicken, which too must have come from an egg. So, again, which came first?

On one side, we have “Team Chicken.” According to the YouTube video, research shows the protein needed to make chicken eggs called OV-17 is only found in chicken ovaries. Without OV-17 the chicken shell could not be formed, so technically without a chicken you cannot get a chicken egg.

Another question raised, however, is what is a chicken egg? Is it simply an egg laid by a chicken or is it one that contains a chicken? Another way to look at it would be if an elephant laid an egg and a lion hatched from it, would it be a lion egg or an elephant egg?

On the other side of the story we have “Team Egg.” During reproduction, two organisms pass along their genetic information in the form of DNA. When the DNA is replicated, it is never exactly the same as the original. When you think of it this way, you could say an animal very similar to a chicken mated with another creature similar to a chicken, and when their DNA was multiplied it was changed to the chicken we know today.

What some people fail to realize is there is one more aspect that we often forget. Everyone's beliefs are different, but those who choose to believe in Christ will find their answer in the Bible. In Genesis 1:21, it reads that on the Fifth Day of Creation Week, He created “every winged fowl after (their) kind."

This all leaves us with three scenarios. One suggests that the chicken came first because the protein found in chicken ovaries is needed to make the chicken shell. The next shows that the egg came first through two similar animals mating and their DNA creating the animal we call a chicken today. The last theory states that God created the winged fowl first, which is technically a chicken, because a chicken has wings, even though when you think of something winged you assume it can fly.

This still leaves us with the burning question, which came first? I guess you'll need to decide for yourself.