If we all came from apes, and they all generally look alike....?

Question

How come we all don't "generally" look alike?
And if we are descendants of a creature who can only live in a particular habitat, how come people of different natures and cultures are dispersed all over the world?
And if this is something that took hundreds of years to accomplish, how come there are still apes here today that aren't transforming into people? And haven't been for the past couple thousand years? (As there have been people here for the past couple thousand years)
Wouldn't evolution suggest that one creature "evolved" from another? seriously, why aren't they continuing to "evolve?" Wouldn't there be no apes left? Why are our "ancestors" still here?
What characteristics of humans do apes possess that other animals don't?
And where did the apes descend from in accordance with the big bang? And where did all the other animals come from?
Birds, reptiles, horses(donkeys, mules, ponies), elephants, bears. lions.....etc. Please tell me how did they get here? Life is so vast...

Answer 1

Okay, one question at a time!

You said that apes don't generally look alike. You're wrong. They're different (unless they're twins). Some are bigger, or hairier, or a different shade of color, or has an extra toe. So there, that's taken care of.

Also, you stated that apes live in only one, particular environment. That's also incorrect, since apes live in several different parts of Earth. But us humans, we're not technically apes. We have advanced brains (although it may not seem like it). We have made languages, buildings, World Wonders, and definitely, we have adapted to living in different areas. So, as the human population grew, we moved overseas and overland to new places. You with me so far? Good!

Now you're wondering why apes aren't still evolving. It's because, as new generations form, new species may appear. For example: Two female apes are pregnant. One gives birth to the typical ape. The other gives birth to an ape that is more upright, has a different posture, and has less hair. Well, the latter offspring resembles the modern human more. So generations continue for tens of hundreds of thousands of millions of years. Eventually, the ACME of evolution appears: the Human! That's why apes and humans still live on the same planet (although the fate of the apes may be unsure, with all the habitat-destroying and animal-killing going on)...

Now the characteristics! Apes and humans are amazingly similar! They are both social creatures, living in groups anhd families, for protection and comfort. Also, apes and humans have been known to look (to a certain extent) like each other. We share a similar diet .Apes usually eat fruit, vegetation, meat, sometimes insects. Humans also eat meat, fruits, and vegetables. But apes don't eat fast food. Also, if you compare the skulls and the bones of apes and humans, you'll find several similarities (and differences). These are only just a few answers, there are more, but I just want you to have an idea...

The Big Bang is a completely different subject. Preceding the Big Bang, there was a humongous mass of rocks, debris, and dust. All this was under such heavy pressure that one day it just went KABOOM! Thus, the planets were formed from scattered dust and rocks, that formed together by pressure. Now let's move over to a small planet. A planet soon to be known as Earth. Right now, it's barren and looks like the sight of a nuclear war field. Well, after millions of years, the first bacterium arrived. And from this miniscular form grew creatures of bizarre entities, possesing strange shapes and sizes! All the animals and plants and fish and birds and horses and elephants and bears and lions grew from this one cell! That includes us! It makes you think that your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-(several trillions of "great"s- later) grandfather (okay, so bacteria don't really have a sex, so what?) was a one-celled bacteria.

You're right. Life is vast! And confusing, too! But anyway, I hope I answered your question...

Answer 2

Sister BLI you are putting forth some tough questions. The truth must get out.

Evolution is a false theory. It does not exist. It cannot be proven. Man did not evolve from some lower species in life. Impossible. The Scientists are totally wrong on this point.

God himself created both Man and Beast. He did this in six literal days. He has absolute power and could have done it much quicker if he had chosen to do so. The earth is not 4:5 billion years old. This is a young planet. Only six thousand years old. God doesn't need time to take care of business. When God speaks "it is done".

Isaiah 45:18
"For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else."

Have faith dear friends in God.

Romans 10:9
John 3:16

Answer 3

You should read some science and forget creationist nonsense. Apes and humans are cousins, not parent and child. Man controls his environment, but other animals do not. Men have readapted into 3 bascic races for different climates. Evolution does continue, and that is proven. The Big Bang has nothing to do with evolution. Cockroaches have been here hundreds of millions of years, so not every creature evolves. Some cockroaches may have evolved into other cretures, but the origianl ones obviously survive too. Your questions and comments are muddled, because you have been led astray by liars.

Answer 4

We didn't come from apes. Apes and humans ( and monkeys) had a common ancestor millions and millions of years ago. The same way that lions and tigers had a common ancestor millions of years ago. But lions and tigers do not look alike and they live in very different habitats. Genetically apes, chimpanzees and humans have > 99% homology in our DNA. This means that we have more than 99% of our DNA in common. From a common ancestor dozens of millions of years ago, we evolved as did apes and other monkeys. The apes and monkeys we see today are different from their ancestors millions of years ago. And humans are diffferent from our ancestors millions of years ago. All animals continue to evolve but at such a slow rate that there isn't much change that occurs in 100 years.

One characteristic that gorillas possess that other animals don't is an opposable thumb. But in general, the closer two species are genetically, the more recently a common ancestor existed. Mammals have been around for hundreds of millions of years. Land animals have been around for nearly a billion years. Life has been around on this planet for billions of years. The age of planet earth has been estimated to be nearly 5 billion years, and the age of our solar system is more than 5 billion years. The estimated age of the universe is somewhere between 13 and 20 billion years. All mammals have a common ancestor which is significantly older than the common ancestor simians possess. Zoological classifications for the most part relate common ancestry.

Answer 5

Actually, they don't look more similar than we do. Chimps, orangutangs, gorillas, gibbons and siamangs are all completely different looking animals although we share certain characteristics (for example, the great apes all have opposable thumbs and larger brains). As for why evolution isn't continuing, of course it is. It takes tens to hundreds of thousands of years. Further, there hasn't been any real documentation of evolution until the last 100 or so years. Not enough time to have significant changes. I think that if you spent some time really looking at the fossil evidence instead of posting to yahoo you could really learn something about why evolution clearly makes sense.

Answer 6

I am going to answer your questions one by one...
How come we all don't "generally" look alike?
We do generally look alike - we have similar layouts - face, eyes, etc... Apes may all look alike to us, but to them, I am sure they see differences between one another.
dispersed all over the world?
Evolution - we were able to evolve to live in different habitats. Apes also live in different habitats, just not as wide spread because they lack the intelligence to adjust.
that aren't transforming into people?
They didn't always look like they do now - just because they are apes doesn't mean they will eventually evolve in to people. They will just evolve to best survive in their environment.
Wouldn't there be no apes left?
They don't need to evolve into a different species - they can evolve into different apes - maybe an ape with a different kind of tooth specialized for a certain fruit.
humans do apes possess that other animals don't?
Look at them in comparison to a deer. The ape has many similar features to us - thumbs, facial expressions... etc.
where did all the other animals come from?
Primordial ooze.

You need to read more about evolution - you are obviously confused about the process.

Answer 7

I am only going to answer your first main question because if you will accept my answer to that question, the rest will follow from there. If you do not accept my answer or the many others you have received that are similar, you aren't really looking for a straight scientific answer.

We did not "come from" apes. We are apes. There are 5 great apes. Orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and humans. We great apes have a common ancestor and you could think of us as very distant cousins.

The other main part of your question about apes looking alike, the other great apes don't look any more alike than humans do. They have different facial feature and other differences just like humans do. You think they all look alike because you have never had any non-human ape friends so you could notice that they not only don't look alike, but have different personalities as well.

If you can accept this, you are welcome to contact me directly and I will answer your other questions.

Answer 8

Evolution doesn't work like that.

Evolution works by passing on advantageous traits. Often these traits occur by some sort of mutation, so when a new trait occurs by this mutation, it gets passed on to the descendants.

Say you have a family with four children. Due to some sort of circumstance, one of those children develops a trait that the other three do not have. That trait can be passed on to the offspring of that one child but not to the children of the other three siblings.

Now take that down a hundred generations. All the descendants of that original child have the trait but none of the descendants of the other three have that trait.

Answer 9

It's kind of a sad commentary on US education that this question gets asked every couple of days. I'm not slamming you, by the way - just the system that's supposed to teach you science and is obviously failing badly.
Right then - lots of good questions; here are some basic answers:
1. We did _not_ descend from today's apes. People who should know better tell you this because it suits their particular political goals. Many thousands of years ago, some variety of proto-hominid in Africa began developing a larger and more complex brain; there were a bunch of varieties and offshoots, just like today there are many kinds of cats (lions, leopards, house cats, cheetahs, etc.). We know this because we have found fossil remains that tell us what sort of things they ate, how large their brains were, how they stood and walked, etc. All those died out over time, just as most of the kinds of animals that have ever lived have died out. The branch of hominids that was most succesful at adapting to a variety of situations and conditions hung on and eventually led to us. We're kind of like the Kudzu of animals, only better: we thrive everywhere, but kudzu only thrives in warmer areas.
The modern great apes (Chimpanzees, Bonobos, the various Gorillas) and the lesser apes, such as Baboons, came from a different line of primates. and developed in their own ways under various pressures. They were pretty succesful, too, but they'll all be gone probably within the next 50 years or so - killed off by us.
Your question about "looking alike" is interesting - haven't you ever heard anybody saying "Oh, those XXs all look alike to me!"? Take your pick - people of various groups will say that about people of other groups (unless they think they'll get in trouble). The fact is, humans _do_ all look alike. At least as much as members of other widespread species who live in a variety of areas look alike. Heck, we look a whole lot more alike than the various 'races' of dogs, cows and pigeons do!
Humans and apes, like everything else that lives, are always under pressure from changing conditions, and are continuing to evolve. The changes happen slowly - we can speed up the evolution of other organisms by forcibly breeding them (like plants, dogs, pigeons, cows, goats, lab mice, etc.) but with rare exceptions (some plants), that hasn't resulted in new species, just different-looking varieties of the same species. Evolution in nature is just very slow and often unpredictable. Also, what anything can 'become' is limited by what it already 'is'. The genes you have now are what you have to work with; so it's unlikely that there will ever natually be some variety of dog that has a body layout like a starfish - the bilaterally symmetrical, 'arms-and-legs' body plan is pretty much fixed. We can lose things or turn them into something else through evolution, but it's really unusual for entirely new things to develop in addition to what's already there.
Your question about shared human and ape characteristics is good, but since it's based on your flawed premise that humans descended from apes, I'm not going to go into it - this is too long as it is. There are a bunch of good books around about just that. You might want to look at The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond. He's an interesting fellow; an observational ecologist, good writer, lots of ideas, many of which are probably good ones.
So, how did life develop with such apparent diversity? That also is an excellent question, and way too big to explore in such a tiny space as this. Stephen J. Gould (especially his Life on Earth) and E.O. Wilson are good people to read there, in addition to Diamond, and a host of others (try John Reader for an interesting overview of human culture variations, Gerald Durrel for very nifty stories about a naturalist/collector's travel all over the world, and lots of others). The best thing, of course, is to just open your eyes to see things and keep asking questions. Don't give up if nobody you know has the anwers; there are lots of people , and somebody is likely to have at least a guess. Plus, if nobody knows the answers you're looking for, why not find out for yourself? You don't have to be a scientist to try to figure out answers; anybody can do it..

Answer 10

Try to understand the theory of natural selection of Darwin. Most of the people seems to confused about it. I have seen some vey good answers. If more information is needed I have some ppt presentations that I can mail you. Feel free to contact me