The theory simply says that the chicken is the egg's way of making more eggs
By David Issachari, Director of Science Forum, IOL
The book "The Genome" by Matt Ridley, recently published by Zamora Beitan, contains many innovations in genome research and is updated to the end of the nineties of the last century (20th century).
Many are familiar with Richard Dawkins' "Selfish Garden" theory. This theory says that the animal (and plant) body is actually a "survival machine" of
Selfish and immortal genes, fighting in the genomic space for their continued survival, or in other words: the chicken is the egg's way of producing another egg. Every living thing is a team of genes competing for survival.
But now, to our astonishment, it turns out that there is a struggle between genes inside the body. There are genes that come from the father and those that come from the mother. These genes have vested interests. Those of the father aim to increase, for example, the placenta of the fetus as much as possible, and those of the mother, to moderate it (because the increase is due to the mother!). Well, a normal fetus is the result of a balance between these genes? (or their artificial absence),
On the other hand, if both genes come from the father or the mother, there is a terrible hereditary disease (in Covey-Widman).
A geneticist named Haig made a prediction in which he predicted that such phenomena would not be possible among egg-layers (meaning that there is no influence of the mother on the size of the yolk) or chicks, and it turned out that this is indeed the case.
This is, by the way, an example of a prediction built on evolution, which recovers (and there is more). This mechanism has recently been called: "mate choice".
