• Question: If people evolved from apes why do we still have apes?

    Asked by mintebuttons to Mark, Paul, Sarah on 24 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Mark Roberts

      Mark Roberts answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      OK so to say we evolved from apes is a bit of a simplification – Humans and Modern Day Apes are different but they share a common ancestor – that is we both came from the same species originally – but through evolution we both went our separate ways each filling a distinct niche / envirnoment –

      for example apes are much more suited to where they live than we would be!

      So we both came from an old-day ape rather than a modern ape.

      Does that answer the qu? If not let me know and I’ll try and explain more

    • Photo: Paul Roche

      Paul Roche answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      From my limited knowledge of evolution, I think it’s because humans evolved from one branch of the ape species, so many others carried on evolving on different paths – so today we have many different kinds of ape, of which we are the most evolved?

    • Photo: Sarah Bardsley

      Sarah Bardsley answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      Reverse evolution is a controversial subject. Some scientists think it has happened in some species. For example, US scientists discovered that stickleback, a tiny fish, living in a lake had reverse evolved its body armour after the lake was cleaned up of pollution. When it was polluted the sticklebacks had evolved to lose their body armour because visibility was so low that their predators couldn’t see them and they were safe. After the lake was cleaned up and visibility improved, the sticklebacks lots their security and had to evolve their body armour again. This is the only case I know of. For humans to reverse into apes we would need to lose all the genes that separate us from them – this is highly unlikely and would need some drastic environmental conditions to spark it.

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