It’s the age old conundrum – who came first – the chicken or the egg?

Rather unsurprisingly there is a variety of information available on this topic, but the overall general consensus is….drum roll…

….the egg and in the words of Neil DeGrasse Tyson,

“The egg came first, laid by a bird that was not a chicken.”

But is would be too easy to stop at just the words of celebrity scientist DeGrasse. Others have applied their brain matter to determine the answer, including:

The ancient Greeks – Aristotle (384–322 bc) and Plutarch (about 46–120 ad). Aristotle concluded that both the chicken and the egg must have always existed. Both believed that everything on Earth first had its being in spirit.

British scientists used a super computer called HECTor and 5 million core hours of computer simulations to prove that the chicken came first. So how did they do this? As part of their research into the protein ovocledidin-17 (OC-17) which is found only in the hard part of the chicken’s shell, the British researchers claimed that the chicken must have come first as the formation of eggs with OC-17 is only possible thanks to a protein found in the chicken’s ovaries. ‘It had long been suspected that the egg came first but now we have the scientific proof that shows that in fact the chicken came first,’ said Dr Colin Freeman, from Sheffield University.

Alice Kaswell’s experiment involved posting separately a live chicken (which under US postal laws is allowed provided certain criteria is met) and egg via the US Postal Service. She then departed for the delivery address – the James A Farley post office – a 24 hour post office in NewYork and waited patiently for the arrival. Alice reported the chicken to arrive first.

Physicists from the Queensland University and NÉEL Institute conducted an experiment in the realms of quantum mechanics and concluded that both came first (looks like we’re back to Aristotle). In this branch of science cause-and-effect is not so straightforward as being one event leading to another. Basically this means that events can happen without a set order.

So, what team are you one? Team egg or Team chicken?