• Question: As we evolved from apes, what other animals have evolved as well, and what from?

    Asked by anon-252052 to Sree on 29 Apr 2020.
    • Photo: Sreejith Radhakrishnan

      Sreejith Radhakrishnan answered on 29 Apr 2020:

      Hi,

      Thanks for your question.
      I’m not sure how to answer that question, mainly because I don’t work on topics related to evolutionary biology or genetics, and to be fair, my understanding of evolution is also a bit muddled! Essentially, most species are evolutionarily related, some much more closely than others. For example, humans and chimpanzees share a very high proportion of their genetic information. Similarly, species that live in isolation from the rest of the world, (for example, on islands – think of Darwin’s finches) or those can’t travel very far because of geographic conditions (again, being on islands, or because there are rivers or mountains blocking their movement) may evolve into closely related forms. It’s said that elephants originally evolved from a species that lived in water! – but I’m not sure if that has been proven or disproved. I found this website (http://www.onezoom.org/) really cool and useful to try and understand how related different species on the planet are, and just how diverse the world is.
      Hope this helps!
      Take care
      Sree

Comments

  • Photo: Liane

    Liane commented on :

    Hello, I thought I’d jump on this because I did evolution as a PhD, so I might be able to help. So, the first thing to understand about evolution is that everything is related, but (as your original answer says) some things more closely than others. So, we are more closely related to other apes (yep, we count as apes too!) than things that arent apes. Since everything is related and everything came from the same original thing, every species (a species is just a set of things that are the same, so blackbirds are a species and humans are a species) that lives on earth at the same time has evolved just as much as we humans have. Now, if you want to know some fun evolution facts, I’ve got a whole bunch, but my favourite is that birds evolved from dinosaurs (but not flying dinosaurs – I’m completely serious – and after the dinosaurs went extinct there were giant birds that acted just like dinos. I hope that helps – feel free to ask more : )

  • Photo: Sarah

    Sarah commented on :

    Hi!

    There is some evidence to suggest that all life on earth evolved from one very simple creature, probably formed from some chemicals that naturally made copies of themselves. Scientists call this creature ‘Luca’, the Last Universal Common Ancestor. We suspect this because all living things have so much in common: everything has DNA, which you can swap around like lego bricks, even people and viruses! This makes proteins, which are always made of (more or less) the same 20 small molecules, in every living thing.

    As time went on, one group of Lucas separated off into a group of very simple single celled creatures which we can still find today, and another group evolved into snails, fish, birds, people and any other animal you can think of. The order in which each group of animals branched off is very interesting to study, sort of like building a family tree for all life on earth. Originally this was done by looking at skeletons and other features of living animals and also fossils, but now we use DNA as well which gives us more information.

    Unfortunately a lot of common ancestors have become extinct, because everything is evolving all the time. But we know that birds evolved from reptiles, which is why chickens have weird dinosaur feet and run like a T-rex. You can imagine that maybe some small reptiles gradually became more like mice, with fur to keep them warm, and that some got bigger which helped them fight off predators. The capybara rodents in Brazil look like they’re halfway between a rat and a pig, and there are a few animals like this which help to give us clues.

    Best wishes,
    Sarah