• TheFrogThatFlies@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    So, by this you say that that egg when the egg was first laid it was not a chicken egg, but after the mutation it became a chicken egg? How do you determine if an unhatched egg is a chicken egg then? At this point I think we’re better off calling all eggs Schrodinger eggs, because we never know what they are until hatched.

    • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Well, technically that’s true. Without analyzing a fertilized egg, we don’t know with certainty what the result will be.

      For example, a woman could give birth to an albino without knowing before birth. Albinism is a mutation in the melanin production gene. The mutation forms in-utero. The equivalent to an in-utero mutation in an oviparous (egg-laying) animal would occur inside the egg.

      So the direct ancestor of the chicken laid an egg that mutated into the first chicken egg, then the first chicken hatched from it.