Why dont apes continue ivolving into man?

Question

Highlighted by the recent discovery of the 3.3milloin old girl skelington,why is it that apes dont still (on the face of what we know) still evolve into man as we know it?.The 2 species seem to be stuck as they are.

No discoveries of apes in progression to being humans..............

Answer 1

First of all, apes are NOT one of our ancestors. We have a common ancestor, WAY back. But apes are on a different branch from us. (or we're on a different branch from them.)

Second, why must an animal continue to evolve into a form very familiar to us?

Third, evolution is change over a very long period of time. We haven't been around long enough to observe something that we can definitively say is evolution in humans, apes or any other primate. (we have observed evolution in insects, for instance.)

(and "answerman" makes bigger mistakes in his assumptions than you did.)

Answer 2

First things first: The way to understand evolution is to remember that living organisms are in a state of constant change - It's not that evolution *can* occur, but that it *must* occur, simply because there is no mechanism in living organisms to ensure perfect, flawless reproduction for ever.

Now, suppose you could study a population of chimpanzees in the jungle, on a timescale of millions of years. Clearly, each individual only lives a few decades, so the population is constantly being succeeded by individuals which are different from their parents, because reproduction is imperfect - and remember, this is *inevitable*. It can't *not* happen. All the time this population is inter-breeding, the genes are getting mixed together, and only genes which work well with all other chimpanzee genes will tend to get passed down to successive generations (because individuals with genes that don't work well together will tend not to survive and reproduce).

However, suppose that circumstances arise which cause a group to become genetically isolated from other chimpanzees. This could be as a result of an accident of geography (e.g. an impassable river) or breeding preference or simply great distance. There will develop two distinct groups of chimpanzees which can never again exchange genes, because they have become different enough that mating will not produce viable offspring. This is what biologists define as speciation - i.e. the population has forever split into two distinct groups. Biologists have observed many instances of speciation, so there is no doubt that it occurs.

Assuming that both groups continue to survive, it is again *inevitable* that they will diverge genetically - There is no possible way that both groups, isolated and independent from each other, can change in exactly the same ways, and the longer they continue to breed, the more different they will become. Over millions of years, given that the rate of genetic change via mutation tends to remain fairly constant, the two groups will become as distinct as today's chimpanzees and humans are from each other, and from their most recent common ancestor.

That's why other apes aren't going to evolve into humans.

All this is based on what we *know* is true - it's not supposition or guesswork, and remember it's not just possible, it absolutely *has* to happen, because there is no mechanism in biology to make reproduction a 100% perfect, flawless process.

NB: The reason we're classed as apes is that there is no valid way to group all the other apes together that doesn't also apply to humans. In other words, whatever criteria you use to define what is an ape, in order to include chimpanzees, gorillas, orangs and gibbons, humans will also fit those criteria. Indeed, chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than to gorillas, and gorillas are more closely related to humans and chimpanzees than they are to orangs, so any classification that separated humans out from those other apes would not make any sense.

Answer 3

You could say "Well why haven't all fish evolved into amphibians" ( yes the remains of the missing link has been found in Canada, it is called Tiktaalik) "Why didn't all reptiles die out when they evolved into birds?" ( e.g. Archeopteryx) Why didn't all the therapsid reptiles evolve into mammals? If an organism is well suited to its environment there is no need for it to change. Evolution is a response the change in habitat.If an ecological niche exists, the creatures best suited to that will survive. There is a little shellfish,a brachiopod, that lives off the coast of Japan called Lingulella. Fossils of this creature have been found in rocks 570 million years old. It is literally a 'stick in the mud'.I t has had no need to change.
Something to think about, organisms can and indeed do evolve, whether by natural selection or by "un-natural" ( man made selection,) The potential is there. Do you want proof? have you got a dog.........what were his ancestors, the wolf of course.

In response to the reply by "Common Sense" . When I was a small child , our local vicar ( priest ) told me that the Adam and Eve story was " A fairy Story written before science proved otherwise". When did he tell me that?...... in 1966!

Answer 4

Right, you aren't looking at this right. Apes are still evolving (as are we).

We have a common ancestor, but they split off some 7 million years ago (depending on who's timeline you use).

Our ancestors' environment rapidly changed and were forced (though they didn't decide) to evolve. Apes, on the other hand, didn't have this "pressure" and were able to evolve more specificially to their very stable environment.

Thus, you'll never see an ape turn into man because that break happened long ago and there is no pressure for it to happen again (or, if there is, there is no way they can evolve with us wiping them out).

Answer 5

The christian in me says it's because we didn't come from apes.

But my biology teacher would say it's because we cannot see evolution within days...or months...or even in our lifetime. It takes hundreds of years so apes could be evolving right in front of our eyes and we wouldn't know it for another 1000 years

Answer 6

The real reason is because they never evolved in the first place. There are many, many holes in the theory of evolution, and the truth is that there has never been anything ever found that showed a link. It is completely unreasonable to think that both a male and a female of every single species alive on the planet both evolved in the same way at the same time to insure continuation of that particular species. Even Darwin, who invented this far-fetched "scientific" theory decided he could not substantiate it and before he died converted to Christianity and wrote that he was completely wrong.

There are lots of studies going on presently which will re-write this whole fanciful tale of humans originating the the slime and somehow becoming a rational creature. It is much more likely that a tornado would sweep into an automobile junkyard and in the process of tossing all the junk about, somehow accidently put together a brand new Mercedes than to believe that mankind came from the slime pit.

Keep asking questions like this... search for the Truth.

Answer 7

Will, do you know why, they say we all evolved from a common Ancestor of apes. We parted different ways. We split off, they evolved differently then us. (I don't believe it either)

Answer 8

Simply because, apes never did evolve into man. That is why will never see any ape evolving.

Answer 9

Evolution is driven by need

We needed to adapt to changing environments. They believe we started walking/running because of climate change that reduced the amount of large trees in the area of Africa where human's evolved and turned it into plains.

The cold drove our need to create fire but to do that our brains needed to get larger to adapt to changing circumstances and the need to be smarter then our prey and predators.

Apes and other animals haven't had that need to change. They HAVE evolved and changed, just in different ways. They didn't have the NEED to grow their brains, to walk upright, etc

Answer 10

because they are apes.. not human.. apes are going to be apes forever.. and humans will going to be human forever