Hatching another mystery

The world gets a little too definite every day. Last week we were told, in no uncertain terms, that there was no longer any question about the egg coming before the chicken.

The world gets a little too definite every day. Last week we were told, in no uncertain terms, that there was no longer any question about the egg coming before the chicken. It finally took Disney to organise a debate — in which a geneticist, philosopher and poultry farmer put their collective eggs in one basket — to convince people that the mystery that has evoked the most animated responses from people over the ages, has been unscrambled.

According to the eggsperts, the living organism inside an egg would have had to have the same DNA as the chicken it developed into. So even if the chicken was a mutant, coming from non-chicken parents, the embryo still contained chicken DNA. So, the egg came first.

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Infallible logic, which the staunchest philosopher would be chicken to go against. Funnily enough, scientists have been hollering this same theory from the rooftops for some years now, without those throwing around the metaphor paying them the least bit of notice. For, the chicken and egg dilemma is not as simple as it may seem, carrying with it all our unanswered questions about creation, evolution and the future. And much as we wonder about these answers, it’s these small mysteries of life that make it worth the while — witness the mystique of Mona Lisa. So, for argument’s sake, let’s ask which came first: the rooster or the hen?