A question about evolution: It is said the animals and plants came from the same "source" of life in the

Question

distant past. Some types of flowers have five pedals. Reminds me that most animals, higher forms of animals, also have five "growths" coming off of their main body, a head, two arms, and two legs. Does this mean that we and the five pedal flowers came from the same "root" on the tree of life?

Answer 1

The two are completely unrelated. The branch of differentiation between animals and plants occured well before there was anything resembling modern animals or plants. Remember that a common ancestor wouldn't be anything like the current members of the plant and animal kingdom. The branching of the two kingdoms probably took place when all organisms were still unicellular, so the common ancestor would have no macroscopic characteristics. Remember that having 2 arms and 2 legs and a head is NOTHING like a flower having 5 petals, since the flower is the sex organ of the plant, while our body is the entire organism. There simply is no relation between flower petal number and closeness to humans evolutionarily speaking.

Answer 2

Hmm..
Well - you're reaching a bit far..
There are dicots and monocots and depending on the number of petals (not pedals, as are found on bicycles, not plants) you can usually determine which is a monocot and which is a dicot. Within plants, monocots and dicots are considered to be the two main divisions, with one considered more "simple" than the other.
So I guess you could consider evolution of less parts, etc.
Either way - I wouldn't go so far as to try to pin point a common ancestor between plants and animals unless we go all the way back to Blue Green Algae.
There just isn't a whole lot of evidence outside of the Kingdoms..
Stick to Evolution within Animalia, or evolution within Plantae, the rest is up to speculation and hypothesis.

Answer 3

no, not even remotely. The five-petal flower is a relatively new thing in plant evolution, but plants and animals split off very very early on in the evolution of life. The tetrapod (one head, four limbs) became the standard layout of vertebrates hundreds of millions of years before flowers of any kind appeared.

Answer 4

What ? if your going to take all of that into affect what about tails ? I don't know where your going with this but the relation that you make between the two doesn't seem to have a real common ground and would be surprised to hear otherwise.

Answer 5

very different structures and very different origins. Don't confuse numerical coincidence with any sort of relationship. Numerology, like astrology, is an attempt to force some collection of observations into some sort of comprehensible framework. It's Procrustean behavior, and at best a waste of time.