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If Humans Evolved From Monkeys, Why Are There Still Monkeys?

July 25, 2022

humans evolved from monkeys

1. There is nothing in evolution that states, insinuates, or infers that the entire population of a species must evolve in unison so that once the evolved animal (whatever it is) has evolved, it is all that remains.

All species on Earth evolved from bacteria, but bacteria have not gone anywhere, now have they?

Lower-order animals from which higher-order animals have evolved from are not required to then do or die. Those lower-order animals, if they still have the required adaptions to survive will do exactly that: survive.

If the ecological niche remains, so will species adapted to that niche.

2. Natural selection by random mutation is the gradual process on long time scales of small parent/child genetic differences that add up over thousands, millions, and billions of years.

The most significant factor in natural selection by random mutation is the natural selection part. The environment punishes those that are ill-adapted to it and rewards those with beneficial mutations.

As such, differential environmental conditions imposed on an identical species group will, given enough time, yield enormous differences.

Picture an example: a group of primates has adapted to live in the African rain-forest. A group of said primates, for whatever reason, become separated and stranded hundreds of kilometers away on the Savannah.

Somehow, by some fluke of nature, they manage to eke out an existence.

The former group is not subjected to any new selective (environmental) pressures; the latter group stranded in an environment to which they have not had time to adapt face new environmental pressures.

Those pressures reward certain members, and their future offspring (those with beneficial mutations), with increased success in surviving and passing on those mutations.

Eventually, beneficial mutations such as tallness and more upright walking (ability to spot predators from further away), tool-making (increases strength/efficiency which contributes to hunting success), and finer motor control (increases tool-making and tool-yielding ability) are adaptations that the environment selects for and rewards. 

After a million years, the Savannah group are taller, bigger, and possess fine motor control (and perhaps intelligence as a result).

The rain-forest group, having no selection pressures out of the ordinary remain, more or the less, the same (although gene flow would be likely to change them somewhat also).

The latter group can be said to have evolved form the former group, yet the former group persists.

 

Filed Under: Answers, Science

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