If humans evolved from primates, why are there still primates?

Question

How I understand it is - Evolution is about survival of the fittest. The evolved of the species move on leaving the "unevolved" to extinction. So if we evolved from monkeys, we are the evolved of the species and therefore monkeys should be extinct.

Well, some extremes here. The inevitable debate between the creationists and the evolutionists.

Many apologies to MK Ultra that I'm so stupid. The reason I asked the question was because I was seeking enlightenment. Thank goodness we have experts like you to guide the rest of us.

Thank you to everyone else who took time to answer my dumb question with more respect.

I was kind of expecting the debate between the creationists and evolutionists.

To be honest, I don't think one cancels out the other. I'm totally at ease with the idea that lifeforms were created - in fact it seems much more probable to me than the accidental existence of all the conditions required for life to come about by chance). But I'm also ok with the idea that once life WAS created it grew and evolved.

The big question isn't really how we came to be here - its how we should treat each other now we ARE here.

In that area maybe MK ULTRA has a little evolving to do himself!

And: Think_AboutIt - I'm not being silly. I'm asking a question. Isnt what this Answers thing is all about?

Answer 1

Its because we did not evolve from apes or monkeys. Where are all the half ape half man creatures? Where are all of the missing links? Evolution is supposed to be continual, yet it always stops? Where are the half fish/ half mammals? Where are all these other strange and wonderful creations evolving? The world should be filled with them, because evolution is always always changing, yet where are they? Where all all the other species from the "tree" we evolved from? What makes evolution decide to stop on a species? Is it a warm day, to much sun? Evolution is garbage. The evolutionist will not tell you this fact, Darwin recanted his theory. Sorry but its true.

Answer 2

> "How I understand it is - Evolution is about survival of the fittest."

Well ... yes, but that's a little bit of an oversimplification. All that means is that the ones that are best suited for their environment, tend to propagate more than others. It does NOT mean that all the others die off ... only that they propagate in fewer numbers. That's just the basic mechanism for how the *average* characteristics of a population change over time.

But this has little to do with why there are still other species of primates. In other words, that is not the mechanism for *branching*, which is the piece of evolution you probably are missing.

Other primates species (chimps, gorillas, macaque monkeys) are NOT "unevolved humans". They are fully evolved chimps, gorillas, macaque monkeys, whatever.

They are separate *branches* on the evolutionary tree. A branch happens when two subpopulations of a species become genetically isolated. If this happens for long enough, they lose the ability to interbreed, and they are forever separate species (they can never regain the ability to interbreed). So both can continue to co-exist at the same time, and both can continue to evolve (using that "survival of the fittest") into two very different animals. And in fact both branches can in turn branch again, and again several times ... the result being many species that either evolve into what we see today ... or become extinct somewhere along the way.

So no, it is not true that monkeys should be extinct. Some branches did go exinct. Some did not and are the branches of apes and monkeys we see today.

Answer 3

In short, yes. In a complicated answer: Humans evolved along side primates. We are all descended from the "great apes". The gorillas and chimpanzees that we share our planet with today are not the same species that were around millions of years ago when humans began to evolve from the great apes. Their ancestors were evolving too. We evolved differently because we had a different diet, and different habits, although our social structure was rather similar. There is an evolutionary path laid out in findings in Asia and Africa especially, that shows the human path of evolution. There is also DNA evidence of our relatedness to chimpanzees and gorillas. Using this, scientists can determine roughly when our lines diverged, i.e. when we could no longer be classified as one species (when we could no longer interbreed and produce viable offspring). As to your second question - speciation can occur when a population is separated from the rest of the population, such as by an ocean, mountain range etc. and those populations can no longer come together to interbreed. Over time (and by that I mean A LOT of time - 1000s of years at least) a population will diverge and become a separate species, through gradual mutations in their DNA. Mutation rates are not the same in every species, and depending on their needs two species in the same area may not evolve at the same rate.

Answer 4

Let's say you had 100 primates one million years ago. Out of these 100, a few reproduced and they had off springs that were little different due to random changes. Let's say those that were different reproduced and again, few had off springs that were little different. Repeat this few generations....

Now, you have hundreds that are different from each other WHILE majority of the first 100 primate reproduced and ended up pretty much the same.

One of those that changed and changed and changed, eventually ended up being human.

Others that changed and changed and changed ended up other species of monkeys.

Ones that didn't change are still pretty much the same as what they started with.

Out of ALL THOSE variants, some died because they were no longer suitable for the environment. Some survived and prospered.

As you see, evolution does not require total elimination of the original species, nor, does it have to evolve in linear fashion. It can easily (and does) fan out and create lots of more species.

What you see as monkeys and what you see as humans today share the same ancestors. We are just different branches of the BIG family.

Answer 5

What you're not considering is that we fill a different ecological niche from monkeys. Survival of the fittest is not necessarily a zero-sum game. For example, new species may survive by managing to live where nothing else has been able to thrive before. Also, modern monkeys are not the monkeys of a million years ago either - they too have evolved.

Answer 6

People didn't evolve from monkeys - Both people and modern day monkeys evolved from a common ancestor who was probably monkey-like. Species which would naturally compete with each other for food, water and living space - can live at the same time in different places. But where two species are living in the same place, each must have its own ecological niche to survive. For example you can have two animals living in the same place, where one is adapted to hunt in the day time and one is adapted to hunt at night - or one can be a vegetarian and the other a meat eater; or one can live on the ground and the other can live in trees. - But if both animals live in the same place and eat the same kind of food, and get it in the same way, and otherwise have the same habits, eventually one of them is going to get squeezed out, or evolve in such a way that it no longer competes directly with the other species.- Native species in places like Australia have been driven to extinction when non native species with similar needs were introduced. Evolution is about survival of the best adapted for each ecological niche.

Answer 7

The way I see it, evolution is about survival, yes. However, apes and monkeys have survived, despite obvious challenges thrown their way. We may be better than primates, but a tried-and-true strain does not have to fall by the wayside just because our reasoning dictates that it does so. I mean, look at mathematics: despite having computers, calculators and the like, do we still occasionally use paper and pencil to add, subtract, divide and multiply? Yes. Why? Because paper doesn't require electricity to work. So you see, obsolescence doesn't always mean oblivion. Suppose a better strain of humans evolves from us? Will we have to just die because they say our existence baffles them?

Answer 8

The majority of the previous respondents are correct. A variation can occur which will make a particular species thrive in a new ecological niche. This may indeed result in the extinction of closely related species as apparently happened to our distant various australopithecine ancestors. However multiple niches coexist for various animals and plants to ensure that they too thrive and survive.
To glimmerbrains like 'johnny' and 'peta'..get off this site and back to your trailer parks. One thing we do know about inbreeding is that it is evolutionarily unsuccessful and leads to retarded and stunted offspring..like you! So there's positive scientific evidence of evolution for you. Get that gun you purchased from the store..load'er up and play RR..or try chicken on the freeway..See if god protects you..Do let us know how you get on..No, of course you won't b able 2..lol

Answer 9

Survival of the fittest only means that if resources become limiting, then the fittest will survive. In the case of humans and monkeys, at the time resources were not limiting, so both could co-exist. Same thing is true today--there is no single fittest type of tree, plant, bacteria, etc.

Answer 10

Your logic is of the order of "If bread is made from flour and water and yeast, and I have a loaf of bread, how come there are still flour & water & yeast in the world?"

You are just being silly.

I'm sure you have no problem understanding that various dog breeds were deliberately bred by mixing dogs with specific desired traits; when any particular breed was achieved, did that make all the other dogs vanish?

Answer 11

IM me your question is so daft it will take ages to explain they have evolved as well we never evolved from monkeys If you know anything about evolution you would not talk so silly evolution says there was a common link they branched of one way we another did you know birds were once dinosaurs why don`t reptiles turn into birds. Read more you have no idea what you are talking about. There is plenty of evidence that life on earth has evolved why are there no human bones as old as dinosaur bones