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 <garbled> 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

<chwnk>

this

which in turn

<chwnk>

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

<buk buk buk buk>

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!

<buk buk buk buk>