Shwmae Bethany
As a joking afterthought at the end of your last video
you asked me what came first
the chicken
or the egg?
and the answer is much simpler than most people think
and also far more complicated
the answer is the egg
the egg that would have hatched the very first chicken
would have been laid by a creature that was very, very similar to a chicken
but not quite
the more difficult question is what is a chicken?
At what point would a creature that was very much like a chicken
but not quite
tip over into being an actual chicken?
It wasn't until I was out of University that I had any understanding
of the theory of evolution
through reading articles and watching youtube videos
and while I don't claim to have an amazing amount of knowledge
please allow me to butcher some very basic evolution for you here
the distinction between what is a chicken
and what is almost, but not quite a chicken
is decided by humans
we like grouping things
this is this
that is that
these are the ways that they are similar
and these are the ways different
we see the progress of evolution through periodic markers of change
the most famous image image relating to evolution is called 'The March of Progress'
its the one that looks like this
it was created by an artist called Rudolph Zallinger
that's not particularly important to what I have to say today
but 'Rudolph Zallinger' or 'The March of Progress'
is bound to be the answer to a trivia question one Christmas
and when that question is asked we'll look at each other and go
"aaah"
but we view progress as this becomes
this
which in turn
morphs into this
like a pokemon turning level 16
the metamorphosis occurs
this one isn't a chicken
this one is
that isn't how this works
in the many millions of years it takes for this version
to become this version
so many millions exist in the middle
this isn't mk. I -> mk. II
in reality there were innumerable different forms between the two
it was less a progress of incremental forms and more like
a Hollywood-LSD mesh of 'bleeeeurgh'
morphing onwards through millions and millions of years
and that's fun
bleeeeeurgh
so why do we decide that this one is not a chicken
and that this one is
I don't know the details
I'm not a scientist
and anyway
neither of them are chickens
they're my hands
I'm just a bit disappointed that I didn't get more of an evolutionary
education at school
although to be fair a lot of that responsibility may lay with my class
it might be our fault
one time we were in a biology classroom
and we were meant to be learning about osmosis
now to do this we had potatoes and we were meant to be
taking samples from them to see how water passed through them
and instead of doing this
we threw them across the room at each other
we were the top set of triple science
we were 28 years old
and we were also the teachers
and the potato was my mother-in-law
Anyway now you know that the egg came first
maybe that's why the chicken crossed the road
Ffarwel!