totally wacky question but here goes.... we evolved from guriellas & monkeys & chimpanzees?

Question

then why are they still existant? it's been bothering me for ages. like if we evolved("we" i mean man) throughout millions of years then why are they still here? dont get me wrong i love monkeys & chimps. its probably an easy answer like...haha

Answer 1

Hi. I will also be polite because you seem to be asking this question with sincerity. (People get hostile with this question because it is asked *repeatedly* by trolls and idiots who have no intention of reading, much less understanding, the answer.)

First, as others are saying ... we did NOT evolve from gorillas and monkeys and chimpanzees. Instead we all have a common ancestor. This is an important point because (A) it reminds you that they are not "still" here any more than we are "still" here ... gorillas, chimps, monkeys, and humans are ALL newcomers ... they are just as recent a product of evolution as we are. And (B) this reminds you that they are not our ancestors, but the descendants of the same ancestor that we have ... an ancestor that IS extinct.

But even more importantly. Here is a chance for you to understand one of the central themes of evolution.

If you learn nothing more about evolution ... learn one word:

BRANCHING, BRANCHING, BRANCHING.

Evolution is not just a chain. It is a constantly branching TREE. Evolution is not just one animal changing into a different one. Every new species is always the result of one species BRANCHING into two species.

How does branching occur? Sometimes members of a species get separated from each other (e.g. a river cuts through a valley, one troop of individuals migrates far away, a bad drought or flood puts them into different valleys, continents divide, etc.) It could be the entire species getting isolated into two halves, or just one small group that gets isolated from the rest of the species ... the the result is two subpopulations of the same species. If these two subpopulations lose all contact with each other (they are not mating), then they will accumulate genetic changes over many generations. If they are separated for hundreds or even thousands of generations, then they can lose the ability to interbreed. (I.e. even if they come back into contact and show some desire to mate, the resulting offspring are stillborn or sterile). Since they cannot interbreed, they are now considered two separate species.

And that's how one species BRANCHES into two species. They can never become one species again ... they can never regain the ability to interbreed. Forever more they will continue to develop in very different ways, and get more and more different.

So one branch can go on to be chimps, and the other branch can go on to be humans.

I really hope that answers your question.

---- P.S. to narkypoon ----

The reason nobody talked about mutation is not because it is inconsistent with Darwinism (which it is not), or because we don't know about its role in evolution, but only because *it is irrelevant to this particular question*. Your answer took a swipe at other people, but did not address her question AT ALL.

Answer 2

I've read throught the other answers and they all give the stock Darwinian response about evolution, natural selection and survival of the fittest. Not a word about mutation.

Reason? Darwin didn't understand mutation and therefore didn't consider it in his theory.

Here's the real story:

1. Animal A has an offspring B that is actually a genetic mutant. The mutation is not of a fatal type so the mutant breeds and has offspring who are a mixture of As, and Bs who live side by side.

2. Then the environment changes and the mutation B is more suited to the change than A who promptly dies out. Animal B has mutant C and so on. Eventually mutant X is so different from animal A that even if there were any As around they could not interbreed because X is sufficiently different from A to be a new species.

Any animal from A to Z can give rise to more than one mutant line; each line could end up as a different species from A and from each other and owing to oscillating climates, volcanic disasters, meteor strikes etc they all have the chance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and achieving natural extinction. They can all be recognised as being related, however, whether alive or fossilised.

The survivors of this terrestrial lottery make up our present range of species but include some animals like the crocodile and shark that have survived in an unbroken line effectively unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, because their mutant offspring were less suited to the big changes rather than better. Nevertheless, a whale can evolve from a land-based animal by this process.

None of this prevents the subtle changes in size, shape, beak length etc in a given species that result from isolation, climate change etc. In natural selection, however, a finch is still a finch and a tit is still a tit.

Answer 3

We and monkeys developed from a simple ancestor. the main significant reason they are going extinct is human activity - as a rule destruction of habitat. Evolution is in no way "finished". What occurs is one species splits into 2, and then the two could proceed to exist; maximum frequently after a on an identical time as one will proceed to exist and the different won't (they in many situations compete for the comparable supplies, and the greater efficient one drives out the weaker) - and which could be what's happening here; or the two could bypass extinct if some exterior journey or new competitor is available in. i think the question is, why would not they bypass extinct?

Answer 4

We didn't evolve from gorillas or chimpanzees, sorry, those are modern apes. The apes we evolved from were isolated in the east part of Africa.
So: we evolved from an isolated population of apes. Other populations of apes became the ancestors of the chimps and gorillas.

Here's a question for you: If Christians are evolved from Jews, why are there still Jews?

Answer 5

This is a 2 part answer, the first classical part is stated by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species, Chapter 6.
The second part is the concept of the Ecological Niche;
Homo sapiens evolved on the savannah, We out competed other apes on the savannah and are the last survivors of that group.
All surviving apes are confined to rainforest where humans find it more difficult to survive, even there we are driving them towards extinction through deforestation and hunting.
In the case of the Gorrila the species is down to last few hundred individuals.

Answer 6

We didn't actually evolve from the gorillas and chimps that exist today. We evolved from creatures that were similar to todays chimps and gorillas but which today do not exist. Gorillas and chimps also evolved from these, but due to different evolutionary needs, evolved differently to us.

Answer 7

We didn't evolve from gorillas and monkeys, we just share a common ancestor that is now extinct. Its like a tree branch. If you go down the line of Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon, Australopithecus ect. you can see the general trend. Though farther down they look more similar to 'chimps' they are in themselves not chimps. We are all related. Thats the basic jist of it, take some anthropology classes to get a good understanding of this concept or google it.
This link might be helpful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus

Answer 8

We didn't evolve from chimps, but we share a common ancestor from a few million years ago. Different members of that common ancestor were exposed to a different set of challenges, which caused chimps to stay in the trees like their ancestors, while humans went bipedal and got a little smarter. Both species evolved, just in different ways.

Answer 9

we didnt evolve from apes, we evolved from a common ancestor. You could say that we are like a cousin of the apes and chimpanzees etc. We all had the same grandma but then grandma had several children. One of the children gave rise to apes, another of the children gave rise to chimps, and another gave rise to humans. Making them all cousins. So just like you came from your grandma then your mum, you didnt ever come from your auntie, but your cousin did, and she's still related to you, because she also came from your grandma. Its obviously not exactly like that because there are hundreds and hundreds more generations involved but it kind of makes it easy to think of it that way.

Answer 10

You've misunderstood the theory of evolution. Apes and Man are thought to have evolved from a common ancester, so that they are our cousins, if you like, not our ancestors.