• Question: Why have humans evolved so much, more than other species?

    Asked by Meg to Chris, Josh, Rebecca, Rob, Susan on 16 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Susan Cartwright

      Susan Cartwright answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      We haven’t. All the species that are around today have been evolving for exactly the same length of time and are just as “evolved” as we are. It happens that our evolution has produced intelligence and culture, while the evolution of the cockroach hasn’t – but the cockroach is just as exquisitely adapted to its ecological niche as we are – probably more so, since cockroaches aren’t currently engaged in making their ecological niche less habitable!

    • Photo: Rebecca Dewey

      Rebecca Dewey answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      They haven’t!! Humans are just as well evolved as other species! Natural selection means that biological traits mutate at random and variation happens. The biological traits that are helpful, suit the species better and make it more able to survive and reproduce are the ones that get carried on. The ones that are unhelpful don’t get to reproduce and so die out. So every species on earth has evolved just as much as we have – only different species have different levels of intelligence (of which we think that we’re the highest ;)!).

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