Sunday, April 23, 2017

Which came first - the chicken or the egg?

The answer to the age-old question about which came first is here: Science has spoken: the egg came first. The modern chicken is a domesticated descendant of the “Red Jungle fowl,” a bird native to the Himalayan foothills. Genetic experts have recently determined though, that there’s a bit of “Grey Jungle fowl” DNA mixed in as well, which accounts for the yellow legs found on the common chicken but not the Red J. Somewhere around 10,000 years ago, therefore – likely in a village or temporary camp in the vicinity of modern-day Thailand – the crossing of a wild Grey rooster with a tame Red hen (or vice versa) produced an egg from which emerged the first modern chicken. So unless the geneticists change their minds, it’s settled. Ten millennia later, this chick’s descendants have a reasonable claim to be the world’s most populous bird. Counting beaks in 2010, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation found 19.5 billion chickens, producing 1.1 trillion eggs annually. from the website Progressive Economy

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