• Question: If man evolved from apes and monkeys then why do apes and monkeys still exist? Are apes and monkeys still evolving to men right now?

    Asked by Ayrton to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 8 Nov 2017. This question was also asked by Nat.
    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      Humans didn’t actually evolve from apes and monkeys, we all evolved from the same common ancestor. If you like, they’re more like our cousins or aunts and uncles than our parents or grandparents.
      About 40 million years ago there lived a primate that wasn’t really a monkey and wasn’t really an ape, but was a bit like both. By about 20-30 million years ago, the descendants of those creatures had spilt into two different groups: one became the monkeys that now live in North and South America; the others became the monkeys in the rest of the world, the apes, and us.
      Going even further forward in time, the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees/bonobos lived around 6-7 million years ago – again, that ancestor wasn’t a chimp, a bonobo or a human, but a bit like all of those things. The chimp branch of the family tree has gone down a different route to ours in the last few million years, and that’s why we don’t look quite the same. We have someone in common way back in our family trees, but we aren’t on an evolutionary journey back together.
      I hope that makes sense!

Comments