• Question: If we evolve from apes, why only a certain amount of this animals evolved into humans and not all of them?

    Asked by ItsssAlexandraaa to Ben, Lizzie, Francis, Max, Sian on 6 Mar 2018. This question was also asked by 489munm48.
    • Photo: Max Jamilly

      Max Jamilly answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      That’s a REALLY DEEP question. Think of it like Pokemon. Even when a Pikachu evolves into Raichu, there are still lots of Pikachu left in the world. It was the same with human evolution. Humans probably evolved from something that looked more like a gorilla than a human. At the same time as humans evolved, the ancient gorilla-human also evolved into modern-day gorillas, so one species turned into two. Evolutionary biology is really cool – ask your teacher to give you some reading!

    • Photo: Ben Mulhearn

      Ben Mulhearn answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      I had to ‘heart’ your answer then, Max. Pokemon – ingenious! Also it’s important to add that evolution occurs when we have ‘selection pressure’. This means when a species is under pressure from it’s environment to survive, it has a larger chance of developing new adaptations to it’s surroundings. An example is a kind of moth that lives on the bark of trees. The moth was usually brown, so camouflaged. When the industrial revolution happened, the bark was dirty with soot and went black, therefore birds could see the brown moths and eat them. The birds are the ‘selection pressure’. This caused any moths which appeared black to survive against the blackened bark. After we stopped burning so much coal and the bark was no longer covered in black soot, the exact opposite happened! The moths have now evolved back into a shade of brown. Amazing! This is a really simple example of evolution but the example can be applied to any organism with selection pressure on it.

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