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 Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 10:12 pm
Disclaimer -- I'm not learned, I'm not brilliant, I'm not a biologist, I'm still in high school. I don't understand everything I see, hear, or am fed (knowledge and food), and I don't claim to know anything about anything because I honestly don't believe that I can ever be genuinely sure about anything. After all, science is always changing and the world is always changing. I doubt we'll ever know anything for sure and there will always be ways to disprove something previously stated. I am merely an inquisitive teenager observing things and attempting to understand the world surrounding me and the universes beyond.
Being a sophomore in highschool, I am in biology. We have been doing multiple dissections all semester and we've been basically showing ourselves the evolution of the beings, from the phylum Cnideria (sorry, no spell check on this computer) to Arthropeda and Echinoderma(? I forgot the name, Duncan doesn't make us memorize anything. n3n). We've basically been looking at the early stages and all of the obvious changes, etc. and listing them, comparing and contrasting. We haven't gotten to the phylum Annimalia yet, but we'll be there in about a week and a half. Anyway, we decided to talk about evolution in general and of course someone brought up humans starting out as monkeys.
One of my classmates said something brilliant that day, or at least I have a high regard for them. This was a very good question, "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys and why aren't they evolving?" Of course she got the general answer from all of the condescending students who think they know everything, "Um, idiot, it takes a million years to evolve. You're not going to see results until forever from now and you'll be dead by then." Obviously, they missed the main idea, the big picture. My fellow's question lead to many of my own. Why can't we see obvious similarities, well even more obvious similarities between the apes and ourselves? Are there any types of monkeys that actually stand on two legs? Are there any studies going on to track the developmental changes of these animals? If so are there any loggings of them? I mean, we have zoos for crying out loud, are they checking things like this every day, logging them and keeping track? Have there been any recent (or are there) progressions?!
Theoretically, my classmate is right. We should be seeing signs, if only slight, announcing the further evolution of the apes. If we are so related to them, they should still be evolving. If my friend is right, don't you all agree that the species of monkey-ape closest related to humans should have evolved some already?
I'm almost certain that we are the spawn of apes, and wouldn't it be pretty darn nifty to study the evolution of humans once more? If we could even force the evolution of apes to humans, we could basically track the evolution of humans. Of course, the climates would be different but it would be such a scientific accomplishment, one to be shared with the world. With those who do and do not understand.
I mean to say, if diseases can mutate and evolve genetically to get around an antibody in the body, then why can't an organism evolve to become something it needs to become?
Maybe that's why we are not seeing distinct signs of evolution. Maybe because we don't need any more humans on this earth, the apes have not mutated genetically and evolved. Could I even go as far as thinking that maybe evolution is just genetic mutation, and that it is almost like an instinct? Something could trigger a reaction in the apes to make them evolve and it stays dormant when unnecessary for life. Maybe, humans evolved into humans because they had to, and now that there are perhaps too many humans, this thing that triggers a reaction is lying dormant within the organisms because it isn't necessary for life.
What if?
What if evolution could reverse? I understand I'm going off on a tangent here and that this whole rant is long winded, but I'm on a roll. B)
If I am correct, could our genetics move backwards to stop ourselves from killing ourselves off, along wih the rest of the world?
I have to stop now. I hope this isn't too... far? I'm aware that some genius has probably had the same ideas already but these things just dawned on me. I haven't done any research on this topic, nothing outside of biology class and the classes I've had in previous years of school...
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Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:56 pm
First, let me start off by saying I do not actually believe in all the theories of evolution. Now let me address the points. in the theory of evolution, humans and apes have a common ancestor. This is not the same as saying an ape had two children, one another ape, and the other a human, or any elaborate family tree stating essentially the same thing. Common ideas about common ancestors include things like rodents or other prehistoric tree creatures with opposable thumbs. Another solid point of evolution is the idea of natural selection. The title "natural selection" isn't the best in the world, but the theory is so blatantly obvious it shouldn't be a theory at all. It boils down to this: Assume 10 different types of creatures. 4 of them are predators and 6 are prey. After the predators go hunting, there are now 9 different types of creatures. The 10th was eaten. A generation later, there's as many creatures as there were before, but species #10 is missing. Toss in some hurricanes, volcanoes, and plagues, and you get a whole bunch of extinction. Thankfully there are tons of different species. In the same way two children may have different characteristics from each other and from their parents, it is possible over several generations that a particular tribe may split off from a given gene pool and produce an entire race with drastically different features from another. For example, the Japanese people despite what anthropologists want to believe, were actually very isolated for centuries and have genetic distinctions from people of mainland China and Korea that may not have existed were it not for the isolation. The British family and many other European nobles interbred with each other for centuries creating a distinct set of genetic traits and flaws. Natural selection basically says the species that manage to survive continue to breed while the species that dies off does not continue to breed. Unfortunately this presents a serious hole in the argument that humans and apes have a common ancestor: it is entirely possible humans have an ancestor common with some other species or series of species that never had anything to do with apes, and the other species all died out aeons ago. The theory of evolution also assumes interbreeding experiments never took place in the ancient world because people couldn't possibly be that smart. Archaeological evidence points to the contrary, thus a large number of "evolved" species might actually exist only because of human farming or breeding experiments. For all we know, the "ancient missing link" and even apes could be descendants of an ancient human ancestor having kinky sex with some other ancient animal. Sounds pretty stupid until you look at the history of Tibet and Avalokitesvara.
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Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 3:34 pm
Well... it's complicated. Evolution has a lot going on in the theories.
One thing I must clarify is that since humans came about and started making civilizations, evolution FROZE. Yup, it stopped because it wasn't a matter of life or death; it was a matter of invention. In fact, there's a theory going around that now evolution is going backwards, because we're breeding the deaf, blind, handicapped, and deformed, and all because humans that should be dying are now living and making children with the same problems. And since we have all of these conveniences, we don't need to evolve. (If you've seen the movie Wall-E, the point is that humans devolved due to conveniences.)
As for the animals in the zoos, what most people don't realize is that evolution happens in jumps, and it doesn't happen in captivity. The concept you need to concentrate on is natural selection. Because instead of nature selecting these animals, WE'RE selecting them.
Besides, humans evolved in a funny way. What happened was: the ape families started evolving into human-like creatures, which could be described like 'missing link's. All of these different species, being so warlike and destructive like our tendency today, started murdering each other in massive numbers until entire species were wiped out. The last living one was homo-sapien, which was the biggest, strongest, maybe smartest, and most aggressive. THAT'S why we're so much different than other animals. Because we destroyed all of the ones closest to us.
But in the world today, evolution is slowing down because of humans. We might seem like the best animals ever, but we're not. We're the worst. The only way we make up for it is that we can think of things that would never matter to any species in billions of years, all for the purpose of devolving. In fact, I guess there's no upside to having humans. All we do is destroy. We found a loophole in natural selection, and now we're tearing the whole thing apart.
You won't see any changes in zoo monkeys. Trust me. They're not going to genetically adapt in captivity.
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 2:56 pm
Now, I am not positive about this, but I'm pretty sure that it has been reported that human evolution is still in process. There were a few people that were born without their (mostly unused) pinkie toes. Scientists saw this as a sign of further evolution of the human race. Again, I'm not completely sure of this.
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Posted: Thu May 14, 2009 8:02 pm
Jorylol Now, I am not positive about this, but I'm pretty sure that it has been reported that human evolution is still in process. There were a few people that were born without their (mostly unused) pinkie toes. Scientists saw this as a sign of further evolution of the human race. Again, I'm not completely sure of this. WUT?? eek
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Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 4:39 pm
Jerba Well... it's complicated. Evolution has a lot going on in the theories.
One thing I must clarify is that since humans came about and started making civilizations, evolution FROZE. Yup, it stopped because it wasn't a matter of life or death; it was a matter of invention. In fact, there's a theory going around that now evolution is going backwards, because we're breeding the deaf, blind, handicapped, and deformed, and all because humans that should be dying are now living and making children with the same problems. And since we have all of these conveniences, we don't need to evolve. (If you've seen the movie Wall-E, the point is that humans devolved due to conveniences.)
As for the animals in the zoos, what most people don't realize is that evolution happens in jumps, and it doesn't happen in captivity. The concept you need to concentrate on is natural selection. Because instead of nature selecting these animals, WE'RE selecting them.
Besides, humans evolved in a funny way. What happened was: the ape families started evolving into human-like creatures, which could be described like 'missing link's. All of these different species, being so warlike and destructive like our tendency today, started murdering each other in massive numbers until entire species were wiped out. The last living one was homo-sapien, which was the biggest, strongest, maybe smartest, and most aggressive. THAT'S why we're so much different than other animals. Because we destroyed all of the ones closest to us.
But in the world today, evolution is slowing down because of humans. We might seem like the best animals ever, but we're not. We're the worst. The only way we make up for it is that we can think of things that would never matter to any species in billions of years, all for the purpose of devolving. In fact, I guess there's no upside to having humans. All we do is destroy. We found a loophole in natural selection, and now we're tearing the whole thing apart.
You won't see any changes in zoo monkeys. Trust me. They're not going to genetically adapt in captivity. That's not devolution, we're just evolving in a different way. Humans aren't really the best physically, but we've excelled because of our mental abilities, namely our ability to adapt and change. So, while we may be physically "regressing", we're still evolving mentally with new inventions and technologies. Our evolution has just progressed beyond physical evolution of ourselves and become us using our abilities to alter and shape the world around us. Humans are really just the masters of adaptation. As for evolution of the apes? How long have we been observing them, anyway? A hundred years? Evolution happens over generations, and it would take multiple generations to notice anything distinct over entire populations (which evolution applies to). With animals like apes, we haven't observed much because we haven't had that many generations to compare - after another generation or two we'll probably start noticing some changes based on selective pressures. It's much better to use things like bacterial cultures, as in some cultures evolution can be observed over a week or even a day because the cultures go through single generations in relatively short periods of time.
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Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 5:09 pm
Hm, I didn't even consider to watch evolution in something that reproduces that quickly.... Then again, how apparent can the developments be?
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Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 5:54 pm
Jorylol Now, I am not positive about this, but I'm pretty sure that it has been reported that human evolution is still in process. There were a few people that were born without their (mostly unused) pinkie toes. Scientists saw this as a sign of further evolution of the human race. Again, I'm not completely sure of this. Evolution is basically changing to adapt to the environment. So yeah Humans will be always going through evolution until we die off, if we ever do. ( All species do die off, though...) I took Anthro last year and I believed the book actually said Humans aren't related to Apes, (yeah we are in the same species family, but we aren't closely related.) Our skulls are actually very different as I remember, and from everything we all have there is nothing that links us that closely to them. The only thing there is that is believed is that we evolved from a common ancestor as Apes. I wish I could find this picture. Hope you understand what I'm trying to say. I'm exhausted right now. LOL.
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Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 11:15 pm
The basic response to the "why are there still monkeys?" question is: why do you have cousins?
We evolved from the monkeys that exist today in the same manner that people are birthed by their cousins (hopefully this doesn't happen) in that we didn't. We share a common ancestor with monkeys, in the same way that you and your cousins share grandparents. Your part of the family tree did one thing, and your cousin's part of the family tree did another thing, and the paths diverged. Evolution allows for people to have siblings who choose to do different things, and indeed encourages such.
As far as I'm aware, humans are still considered apes, in that we're in the superfamily Hominoidea. Colloquially we might not be "apes", but from a scientific, and more specifically an evolutionary viewpoint, we are still apes. We might not be "close" to some of the other apes in that we destroyed everything else in our genus, but we're still apes.
And humans are actually changing quite rapidly on the chemical level. We aren't getting faster or stronger or anything obvious like that, but our immune systems, our cellular resource management, and similar things are changing very fast. It's not (usually) a matter of life-or-death selection, but selection is still hard at work dictating who has how many kids. It's just that biological selection is augmented by social selection now.
Finally, on the note of interbreeding: no theory of evolution that is taken seriously actually states that interbreeding of different subspecies can't occur; that's why they're subspecies and not species. Delineating species is very difficult, and while evolution does state that single populations can give rise to multiple incompatible species, it doesn't necessarily indicate that such happens because of physical incompatibility; behavioral differences also factor in, and those can be overcome by circumstance.
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 12:35 am
Why am I not surprised to see this topic here? neutral Quote: Hm, I didn't even consider to watch evolution in something that reproduces that quickly.... Then again, how apparent can the developments be? As apparent as the differences between kids and their parents. We all have our own unique personalities and traits, but there are those times when we act like our parents. It really just depends on what scale of development you're looking for. Sometimes it can just be a single genetic mutation, like blue eyes.
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Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 9:26 am
Jorylol Now, I am not positive about this, but I'm pretty sure that it has been reported that human evolution is still in process. There were a few people that were born without their (mostly unused) pinkie toes. Scientists saw this as a sign of further evolution of the human race. Again, I'm not completely sure of this. I also heard that human evolution continues, but that recent generations were born with their thumb at a slightly different/lower angle due to large amounts of keyboard usage in our environment. Sounds suspect to me, so I can't say that I'm 100% sure how true it is.
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Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 2:52 pm
Golden Dysprosium Why am I not surprised to see this topic here? neutral Quote: Hm, I didn't even consider to watch evolution in something that reproduces that quickly.... Then again, how apparent can the developments be? As apparent as the differences between kids and their parents. We all have our own unique personalities and traits, but there are those times when we act like our parents. It really just depends on what scale of development you're looking for. Sometimes it can just be a single genetic mutation, like blue eyes. Hm. But I thought we had traits unlike either of our parents not because of mutation but because of dominant and recessive genes. Something that doesn't show up in a parent might show up in a child. And eye color is determined by many genes. (As I have read in Discover magazine.) But yeah, I know what you mean. Like how sometimes children can have a slightly unusual skin color. Like one of my friends who is much whiter than her brother, whose parents are Caucasian and black. Well, that's not a very good example, but it's something like that.
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Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 2:56 pm
I thought the key to evolution was reproduction. (Actually, it's something like mutation, reproduction, inheritance.) But if something like keyboards ( rolleyes ) can change us genetically, then it would have to determine life and death for prepubescent humans. Otherwise, keyboards would make no difference as to the shape of our thumbs, and nor would the significance of the pinkie toe.
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Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 3:04 pm
To continue on that thought, different species evolve because:
1. new traits in a species allow it to survive better than its ancestors. (example: deerlike animals have cloven hooves because they allow them to survive while running from predators in a new natural habitat, such as a savanna.)
2. better species tend to eliminate others. (example: humans are believed to have destroyed all of the "missing links" we're looking for, due to our intentionally destructive nature.)
Other examples include:
-humans standing upright to see over tall grass
-humans and monkeys developing long fingers to reach fruit
-opposable thumbs to grasp things
-head hair to preserve body heat
et cetera.
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Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 4:51 pm
Jerba2 Golden Dysprosium Why am I not surprised to see this topic here? neutral Quote: Hm, I didn't even consider to watch evolution in something that reproduces that quickly.... Then again, how apparent can the developments be? As apparent as the differences between kids and their parents. We all have our own unique personalities and traits, but there are those times when we act like our parents. It really just depends on what scale of development you're looking for. Sometimes it can just be a single genenic mutation, like blue eyes. Hm. But I thought we had traits unlike either of our parents not because of mutation but because of dominant and recessive genes. Something that doesn't show up in a parent might show up in a child. And eye color is determined by many genes. (As I have read in Discover magazine.) Where do you think you get those genes from? wink
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