text: what came first, the chicken or the egg? or even greater, why did the chicken cross the road this is actually very easy to answer, based on evolution the egg had to come first. evolution works like this: there are slight changes in the genetic information of the sex cells (i.e. eggs and sperm) of individuals that are passed on to the offspring of any two parents. these changes in the genetic makeup are called mutations. mutations can either have: 1) a deleterious effect on the offspring (genetic disorders may arise, many times these are lethal); 2) sometimes these mutations may be advantageous, making an individual more fit than its neighbors (this is sometimes referred to as conferring an advantage); or 3) these mutations can have no effect, making no change from parent to progeny.  in the case of the chicken, it must have evolved from something else that became less fit than the chicken and eventually becoming extinct. the chicken became a chicken from this other organism through mutations that built up over time in subsequent generations. however, whatever the genetic makeup that finally became defined as a chicken, that individual was first conceived and developed in an egg before being hatched. the egg and sperm that fused to produce the chicken didn't bypass the period of gestation within an egg that had developed in the bird family millions of years before the chicken came along.  so the simple answer to this question is the egg came first -- unless you believe in fairy tales?