Isn't it confusing to say man evolved from apes when you can't say that lions evolved from the household cat?

Question

To me, speaking of two different brances on the tree of evolution as having evolved from each other is just confusing to most people. As in the lion and the household cat evolving from each other. It is easier to swallow that perhaps they had a common ancestor way way back in time. Evolutionary soundbites never speak of the incomprehensible amount of time that is required for any of these things to happen. No wonder people just don't get it. Maybe it is incomprehensible.
I will accept the wisdom of the internet on this one.

Answer 1

Apes and humans evolved from a common ancestor.

House cats and lions evolved from a common ancestor.

In both cases, one did not evolve from the other. They share common ancestors.

This is how evolution works.

Answer 2

Evolution can be confusing. It is similar to a tree with millions of branches. A cat and a lion both have a common ancestor. They are both felines. As the ancestor evolved, it branched out into a lion, but the ancestor still existed and it further evolved into different species. The cat may have not evolved from the lion, but perhaps a smaller feline species. Evolution takes millions of years. It's is far from instantaneous. New species are pretty much mutants, because the way a new species is formed is by random mutations in the DNA. If the mutation is helpful and allows the organism to survive better than the others, then it will most likely be passed down to the next generations and so on. So the lion is a large predator because it lives in the wild and needs to hunt to survive, but the domesticated cat is much smaller, because it does not need to fend for itself. At some point is must have been and advantage to be smaller and humans have taken advantage of selective breeding with cats. Cats and lions did come from a common ancestor, but a lion did not merely turn into your cat in a day. It is a slow process that takes millions of years and random changes for a new species to come into existence.

Answer 3

The problem is that "ape" is a generic term referring to a range of animals, living, dead, and potential. Secretsauce will tell you that taxonomically, Homo sapiens sapiens is considered a species of great ape.

The felines don't have that kind of generic term ambiguity. House cats and lions share a feline common ancestor.

You might then say that humans and chimps share an ape common ancestor... but you don't get to point to an existing species and accuse it of being that common ancestor.

Answer 4

Man and today's apes had a common ancestor, just as lions and house cats. Evolution is a bush; not linear.

Answer 5

We evolved from the prehistoric ape, whilst the housecat and lion evolved from the prehistoric lion. It's a similar ancestor, not necessarily a different living species. Though, it still could be living, like the ostrich and their lineage.

Answer 6

Yes, you are exactly correct.

The problem is when pointing to any two *modern* species and saying that either one is the ancestor of the other. It is silliness.

Evolution is about common ancestry. It is absolutely stunning how many people fail to understand this simple concept.

Answer 7

They just found 12 million year old, modern gorilla teeth. This is another upset to the human evolution theory. So yes, all the evidence is very confusing. If you try and fit it into the Darwinian; "all life having a common ancestor. " Theory.

Answer 8

How can you you prove that the cat was here first? maybe the cat evolved from a Lion.