If a man evolved from monkeys and apes why do you still have monkeys and apes?

Answer 1

Why There Are Still Apes

• Many people believe that man did not evolve from apes at all, we were created by God in His own image. That God gave man a human soul that makes them individual.
  
  
• The only other option is a theory called evolution, by which over billions of years, the whole earth and everything in it was formed by hydrogen, which spread through the universe at the Big Bang, an explosion in which the hydrogen was formed.
  
  
• Human beings (homo sapiens) related faintly related. Humans and other apes might share a common ape or ape-like ancestor.
  
  
• A species only evolves to help it in its survival. The apes' ancestors could survive being an ape so they didn't continue to evolve, whereas our ancestors kept evolving to help them stay alive. Survival of the fittest is what drives evolution, and our ancestors just happened to "need" evolution more than the apes. Evolutionary process is performed by mutations, which are usually harmful or fatal. For evolution to occur, an incredible chance happened so that the mutation would not harm or kill the new creature.
  
  
• Apes and humans evolved from an unknown common ancestor. This ancestor split up and evolved into different species, one became erect and the other continued as it was.
  
  
• Humans didn't evolve from apes; rather, we and apes evolved from a common ancestor (who is no longer with us, we have no fossils proving this fact, but we believe it anyway). The relationship is more like cousins than parent-child.
  
  
• By a very great chance, humans developed a brain that allows them to think, love, and be individual persons. Christians call this a soul. It elevates us above beasts.
  
  
• There are still apes because some apes did not evolve into people. If rocks are crushed into stones, why are there still rocks? There are still rocks because some rocks did not get crushed into stones.
  
  
• Different species have evolved according to the conditions and ecological niches they find themselves in. Speciation occurs when a subtle change confers an advantage on a given population.
  
  
• It is also important to remember that not all changes of animals mean it has evolved. Animals have great genetic variety, to suit different environments. This is called natural selection.
  
  Let's think of a simple example of changes by natural selection:
  
  If the world were suddenly covered in snow, and polar bear-type predators invaded everywhere, it stands to reason that they'd be more likely to eat dark-colored animals which they could see more easily.
  
  That would give an advantage to animals which, by chance or design, happened to be white. Animals of a usually black type which happened by chance to be *partly* white might also escape the bears. They would then be most likely to breed, passing on the white genes to their offspring.
  
  Over time, through breeding in a selective group, all animals would become white, as the ones least suited to their environment were weeded out. Some species which were unable, by chance, to adapt, would go extinct as the polar bears ate the lot of them.
  
  So, humans have evolved in a different way than chimps, gorillas and orangutans because the requirements of the environment we found ourselves in were different. It was an advantage for us to go in the direction we went, just as it was for the other apes.
  
  Evolution works randomly. Natural Selection works towards the animal's specific needs. The mutation to create more hair in a cold environment would be in a specific population so some humans in the group would have more hair by nature (genetically). These individuals would in turn have a greater chance for survival in the cold environment. As they are selected for by nature their percentages will increase. More of the hairier humans will survive to reproduce and their children will be genetically driven to be hairier. That is just one of the marvelous and logical ways evolution in our nature world occurs.

• Natural selection is variations in genetic genetic variety that changes a species within itself. For instance, say a tribe of fair skinned people traveled to a very hot climate, those people with darker skin would be more likely to survive thereby passing on there dark skinned genes and eventually weeding out the fair skinned people.

• Evolution only occurs when it is necessary. Some apes evolved into man because either they moved to a new environment or their existing environment changed, making evolution necessary for survival. So, the apes who needed to adapt to their new environment through evolution to survive either did so or were wiped out (apparently, they changed, creating the human race), or stayed in a friendly environment, making evolution unnecessary and therefore, nonexistent (the apes in these conditions remained apes).
  
  
• Technically, humans are apes.

• Science never said humans evolved from apes. Science said that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. That makes humans and apes related species. And those who abhor the idea of humans evolving from apes may be even more incensed to learn that we did not evolve from apes, but from a more primitive species.

Answer 2

Answer

As an analogy, you can liken this to how most Americans are decended from Europeans... yet there are still Europeans.

We did not evolve from today's monkeys and apes. We have a common anscestry with them.

Evolution acts like a tree. It splits. Let's say we have one group of animals, and something happened to split the population... a flood, group split due to size, lack of food, whatever... If the two groups don't interbreed, mutations build up in the subsequenct generations and causes speciation, ego we end up with multiple groups of species which all came from one species.

We see the intermediary speciation in horses, zebras, and donkeys. They can still interbreed, but the outcomes are usually sterile. Given more time, horses, zebras, and donkeys will no longer be able to produce any offspring at all.

Answer 3

Firstly, it must be understood that evolution is not a past occurrence, but an ongoing process that is a universal facet of Biology. Everything evolves, by its very nature of being alive. Evolution is part of the process of adaptation, which is one of the basic characteristics of life. That much said, Homo sapiens did not evolve from apes. Homo sapiens is one of the twenty-four extant species of apes. Monkeys and apes did evolve from a common ancestor, but neither apes nor monkeys are descended from one another. The relation of apes (including humans) to monkeys is akin to first cousins: a person is not descended from one's cousin (hopefully), but shares a common ancestor (grandparents) with them.

Note that there is a discussion in the field of cladistics about whether the ancestor common to both the New World monkeys and the Old World monkeys could not be called 'monkey' as well. If one applies strict monophyletic labelling then apes are monkeys since they evolved from monkeys, and humans, being apes, are also monkeys.
Humans share a common ancestor with other apes and monkeys, they're not direct descendants of them. Nonhuman apes and monkeys are more like our cousins than our grandparents.

The ancestors of all primates are extinct species. This didn't have to be the case, as one could have survived until now, but it just so happens that none of the currently living primates were among that early group. That early group diverged in a period between 58 mya (million years ago) and 40 mya. There are three major clades (groups of organisms that share a single ancestor) to be concerned with at this point. One became the New World monkeys, living on the American continents. Another was to become the Old World primates, including monkeys and apes throughout Africa and Europe. A third would become various species of monkeys that lived in Asia, but those are all extinct for various reasons. Note that all humans belong to that second group, wherever they might have migrated since.

Later, those Old World primates further developed new species (which doesn't automatically make the older species 'obsolete' or 'doomed' in any way) and created more clades, including apes and monkeys. Later, the ape lineage itself split into two clades: the "lesser ape", the current descendants of which are called gibbons, and the "great ape", which includes all other apes like gorillas, chimps and humans.

The closest living relatives to humans living today are the chimps, of which there are two species: Pan troglodytes (the common chimp) and Pan paniscus (the bonobo chimp). I'll use this divergence as a good spot to explain how the split might happen.

Let's look at the common ancestor of humans and chimps. At some point, some members of this species got separated for whatever reasons from the others for a very long period of time (hundreds of thousands of years, at least). One species continued as it did or adapted to changes, depending on what happened to where they lived. The other adapted in the new place where they lived. Again, it's not completely necessary that this happen. It's entirely possible, though unlikely, that each group would remain unchanged until years later, when they meet back up and begin sharing genes again as they mate. But it didn't happen that way and the two groups diverged genetically until they were two separate species. This continued among the chimps at least until we have the two species today, though there could have been others that didn't survive until now, either because they died off or they reintegrated back into one of the other species at some point.

This happened to humans, as well. An interesting factoid to know is that a small percentage of DNA in all current humans who are not directly of recent African descent comes from the Neanderthal.

As an exercise in logic, You postulate that we evolve and ask how what we evolve from could still be around. This is the same argument as asking "If skyscrapers developed from huts, then why are there still huts?"

One possible answer to that is that huts still have their place.

Answer 4

I think it is because some of them kept climbing the trees and others started to use 2 legs and stand straight there fore after doing that for a few years there semen would start to mature like that and there parents would have also made them procreate. They then probably stoped picking ticks off each other for food and started living like humans live today

That's an excellent question. Man did not evolve from monkeys and apes. Man, monkeys, and apes ALL evolved from a common ape-like ancestor over 20 million years ago, at which time monkeys split off from the evolutionary line. Monkeys are strictly New World primates, found only in Central and South America. Apes are strictly Old World primates, found only in Africa and Asia. Humans and apes had common ancestry until about 5-8 million years ago, which explains why we share so much more of our DNA with apes, particularly chimpanzees, than we do with monkeys. At that time, human ancestors split off from the apes. So for the last 5-8 million years, humans, monkeys, and apes have evolved along separate evolutionary lines, which explains why monkeys and apes still exist. In that sense, monkeys and apes are as evolved as humans, but they are adapted to the environments in which they live. A good site where you can learn more about human evolution is the Smithsonian Institution Human Origins Program webpage. http://anthropology.si.edu/humanorigins/ A Thought From Yivo 13 I think that when we evolved from primates the primates had evolved from somthing else, and when we evolve again primates will become the next humans.

Answer 5

Some apes *are* humans - notably all humans, since they are descended from apes. But evolution is not a ladder: it is a branching tree. While some apes evolved to become humans, other lineages of ape went in other directions, and became chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and so on.

Answer 6

The question is a common but inaccurate belief. Humans are primates, we didn't evolve "from" them. Secondly, the question assumes that if evolution were to occur, the entire species would have to evolve instead of allowing a species to branch off. This isn't the case. The common belief in the scientific community is that we are most closely related to chimpanzees, not that we evolved from chimpanzees. We had a common ancestor. Two species branched off from this ancestor and each branch continued to evolve and branch until arriving at what we see today. Evolution is not about a constant increase in "complexity," which is commonly assumed. If this were the case than there would be only a single species on the entire planet, us, yet single-celled organisms still vastly outnumber us. Evolution is about an increase in diversity. If an available niche is open, a species will evolve to fill it, even if it must become "less complex" to be best suited to it. The human line branched off and evolved in a different direction than that of the other primates, but we didn't evolve "from" them.

Answer 7

Just because something evolves and changes doesn't mean the old one goes totally away. A technology example: people still have wall phones even though mobile cell phones are better in many ways. Just because a new car comes out, not everybody runs to the store to trade in old reliable.

This is a common misconception - Humans did not evolve from apes, they ARE apes, and furthermore: apes such as chimps and gorillas are NOT the same as they were when we diverged from our common ancestor 6-8 millions years ago. They have evolved and split off the same as we have.

You can also read "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin and well worth the read even if it is a little deep! Not all apes were fortunate enough to evolve into humans. Some lagged behind. See 2001 Space Odyssey, where the smart, sensitive monkey kills the dumb, mean monkey with a tapir femur, because a big black rock sent by God told him to.

Answer 8

Men, just like chimpanzees, are apes. Now substitute chimpanzees for man, and you'll see why the question is based on an misunderstanding of what common descent means: why are there still apes if chimpanzees evolved from apes?

Evolution produces diverging lineages - but each lineage remains part of the group it descended from. Chicken are still birds; birds are still dinosaurs; humans are still mammals - but not every bird is a chicken; not every dinosaur has been a bird; not every mammal is human.

Another way of rephrasing the question would be this: why are there still Europeans if Americans descended from Europeans? Or: why do you have cousins if you descended from your grandparents?