the chicken and egg story

The chicken and egg story
What came first? Chicken or the egg? I read this story in today's Times of India, that researchers have concluded on this age old question. Till now I had always thought that this is just an English idiom to describe what caused what... To describe this better, let me give you latest example.... Is there really intolerance which caused a leading actor to give a controversial statement.... Or did his statement result into intolerance of his remarks. But that is not the subject...
I was most surprised that this can be a subject of research...i mean researchers are actually trying to find out what came first... The chicken or the egg. And the researchers have concluded that the chicken came first, since the protein which makes up the egg shell comes only from the chicken. That had me stumped... After all, it cannot come from humans. And why cant the egg have come first, since the chicken evolved much later, much later than the dinosaurs, who laid eggs! Why would some researcher spend his precious time to get an answer for this question. What benefit can be derived for mankind by finding out whether it was the chicken or the egg. But then , in the western hemisphere, they do research on everything under the sun... And beyond. For example, someone did a research on how long does it take for cow dung  to dry out... Now how could that be of any benefit to anyone, including the cows? But then research goes on. It goes on because sometimes it leads to break through in totally unrelated areas... For e.g. Few years back there was research on how geckos can walk on walls without falling.... They found that there are Nano hairs on their feet which work like Velcro, and this finding helped the researchers develop a sticker, reusable self adhesive tape. So now we know for sure, what came first... The naturally sticky gecko feet came first, before the reusable adhesive tape...
Now many of you might join the research bandwagon to find out what keeps your wife in good humour... But don't try it out, you may lose many precious hours to find an answer to an unanswerable question!!
Yatin