8 replies to this topic

[bumblesue]

i know this will sound stupid  and maybe someone has the answer. if we evolved from apes why dont the apes that live now evolve?

Edited by bumblesue, 07 March 2007 - 04:50 AM.

[Fluffybunny]

I am not a biologist and can't get into the minutia, but my understanding is that we did not evolve from apes, but we share a common ancestor further back along the evolutionary scale.

[EmpressStarXVII]

Quote

I am not a biologist and can't get into the minutia, but my understanding is that we did not evolve from apes, but we share a common ancestor further back along the evolutionary scale.

That is what I was taught in biology. It's a common misconception that we evolved from apes in the evolution theory.

[Hawkmason]

The Theory is that we did not necessarily descend from Apes as you would see in a zoo

but we evolved from a primate type sub species

like the Wooly Mammoth and an african Elephant

[carini]

We are still apes.

And all apes are still evolving. Every bottleneck or new niche that opens up allows for evolution to continue. Humans are an evolving species, but not until we reach some bottleneck in population will we really evolve into a new species. Our ancestors and chimpanzee ancestors were the same species about 5 million years ago. Our ancestors went one way and theirs went another. There have been probably 10-15 maybe even more dead ends on the way to humans. Neanderthals are one of those dead ends unable to cope with with either homo sapiens sapiens or the changes in environment.

Take bonobo chimpanzees and common chimpanzees. They are different species of chimpanzee, very closely related but only diverged evolutionarily about 1 million years ago.

Bonobos look alot like common chimps, yet their behavior is vastly different. They also have a the hair on their head parted down the middle unlike common chimps.

[Cadetak]

An entire species of animal will not all evolve together. If one ape is in a jungle and another in a desert they will not evolve the same. The species environment is what causes evolution, somewhere at sometime a group of primates needed to evolve into humans but another seperate group of primates at a different location didn't need to evolve.

[bornagainuhmanduh]

This is a wiki link on natural selection.   We didn't evolve from apes!   We shared a common ancestor with them.

The link above deals with Natural Selection as a part of evolution and it has other good links as well.     Make sure to look at the paragraph entitled An Example:Antibiotic Resistance, which discusses how natural selection can be viewed in microorganisms' resistance to antibiotics.  I know that doesn't cover apes, but it offers excellent evidence of natural selection and it's a good start for answering your question.

Edited by uhmanduh, 07 March 2007 - 08:39 AM.

[Seraphina]

As much as this is an arguement that is brought up, it isn't one that makes a lot of sense....it's the same as reasoning: "I exist, therefore my cousins can't exist."

As has been pointed out, all of the species of greater ape in the world today (yes, humans are a species of ape) evolved from a common ancestor. To put it in its simplest form, imagine a man has several children...the children are split up, and each live in a different country. They learn different things, are exposed to different levels of education, and in turn have children of their own and so on, and so forth...generations on, the decendants of this origonal man will have very little in common with each other.

That's much the case with humans, chimps, gorillas, and orangs...we didn't evolve from any existing species of ape, but rather they have evolved alongside us. They have simply evolved within a different ecological niche.

[seanph]

Quote

i know this will sound stupid and maybe someone has the answer. if we evolved from apes why dont the apes that live now evolve?

We evoled from a common ancestor around five (plus) million years ago.  Our closest ancestor is the African ape--gorillas and chimpanzees.

6. If humans evolved from apes then why are there still apes?

Humans did not evolve from present-day apes. Rather, humans and apes share a common ancestor that gave rise to both. This common ancestor, although not identical to modern apes, was almost certainly more apelike than humanlike in appearance and behavior. At some point -- scientists estimate that between 5 and 8 million years ago -- this species diverged into two distinct lineages, one of which were the hominids, or humanlike species, and the other ultimately evolved into the African great ape species living today.

SOURCE
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/faq/cat03.html#Q06

Kindly,

Sean