英語閱讀：先有雞還是先有蛋
以下是小編整理的情感類英語美文欣賞：先有雞還是先有蛋， 希望使你的心靈有所啓發。
雞下蛋，蛋孵雞，這周而復始的循環到底從哪裏開始?科學家們提出了一種解釋--雞由鳥進化而來，鳥由恐龍進化而來，而恐龍從蛋裏孵出來。那就是先有蛋嘍?讓我們一起來看個究竟吧。
Chicken or egg? Like a hall of mirrors at thecarnival, each attempt at an answer just leads toanother question. If the chicken came first, thendidn't it hatch from an egg? And if the egg camefirst, wasn't it laid by a chicken? It's one of thosequestions that seem unanswerable.
Scientists agree on where chickens came from: In a sense, human beings invented them,just like they invented cows and pigs and other domesticated animals on Old MacDonald's Farm.
If chickens were interested in tracing their family trees, they would need to bone up onsome DNA research done in Japan. Every chicken that ever lived can trace its ancestors, sayresearchers, to a particular subspecies of Red Jungle Fowl in Thailand.
The male Red Jungle Fowl looks a lot like a storybook rooster. But the Jungle Fowl isn'tidentical to a farm chicken. Unlike chickens, female Red Jungle Fowls have no combs. AnotherJungle Fowl peculiarity: After mating season, males replace their bright red and orange ruffwith a crop of dull, blackish feathers called "eclipse plumage."
Scientists think the first domestic chickens were bred from Red Jungle Fowls more than8,000 years ago in the region now divided into Thailand and Vietnam. People bred chickens firstfor cockfighting contests, later for eggs and meat.
So the first official "chicken" pecked its way out of an egg laid by a bird that was not-quite-a-chicken. Depending on how you look at it, the egg--or the wild chicken--came first.
In creating the domestic chicken--and coming up with some 175 varieties--human beingsalso created a world where chickens rule the roost: There are more chickens than any other kindof domesticated bird on Earth.
And where did birds come from? Scientists think that a group of egg-laying feathereddinosaurs were probably the ancestors of today's birds. So if it weren't for dinosaurs, therewouldn't be any Jungle Fowl OR chickens.
We've solved the riddle of where chickens came from. But there's still the question ofwhere eggs came from.
Scientists say eggs--handy miniature incubators of life, nutrients already packed inside--evolved more than 1 billion years ago, in the oceans of Earth. When land animals evolved about250 million years ago, their eggs had a tough covering to retain moisture on dry land. Egg-layers like amphibians, reptiles, and insects flourished. The first "land eggs" pre-dated chickensby about 249,992,000 years.
So "the egg" may be one answer to the old riddle, but here's another, if a little longer: Thechicken came after the bird, the bird came after the dinosaur, the dinosaur came after the the egg came long after the first single-celled bacteria, the prokaryotes, evolved in theoceans, some 3.5 billion years ago.
bone up on: 專心致志於
comb: 雞冠
incubator: 孵卵器
