Did we evolve from apes?

rea

Sorry, english is not my natal language.

Yes, I was refering to co-exist, but lets see before co-exist, such specie should start to evolve, for example the other day I saw a documental about a bird called "kya" in Europe and aparently is very intelligent more than apes (before they where near to exterminated, now they are protected), even in group, supose that for a moment this birts start to evolve and start do things that the human do like create start fire, modify rocks for use as tools...

What we will do?? exterminate them¿?¿?¿? even before they are able to become as intelligent as us... when such specie start his FIRST ERA, perhaps we will exterminate them.


I remember now a movie called "mimic", a specie of cockroach modified by human that his life cycle was modified evolve to become like-humans, but the first human that see them, exterminate all the colony ;)... :lol:.

pivoxa15

That is interesting. The film said that in another book of Darwin's 'The Descent of Men' it stated clearly that we descended from apes. So you are suggesting that this historian of science got his facts wrong?

The presenter said that from the fossil records at the time, there was evidence that apes and monkeys existed long before people had.

Could it be the case that Darwin himself thought that we descended from the apes but more recently, evidence and evolutionary science suggest otherwise?

ShawnD

If that is the case, try not to hold it against him. He didn't have squads of nerds trying to link humans to apes, and humans really do seem to be much different than any other species, so that would somewhat point to us being relatively new. I'm not sure what fossils say.

arildno

The proto-human was in all probability a creature that ought to be called an ape, so yes, we have descended from some ape.

detta

Just a quick point. As it stands, from a biological perspective human beings are apes. We are part of the ape superfamily.

DaveC426913

I thought we were primates - one of which is apes, another of which is human.

Mk

I don't know what we would do. It probably won't happen. What if different races split off into different species or sub-species? How are the different races different from species?

selfAdjoint

According to the most-used definition of species, races can interbreed and produce fertile offspring; species may be able to interbreed but the offspring will be sterile (like the mule, offspring of an *** and a horse).

detta

To clarify, all monkeys and apes belong to the order of Primates. Within the Primates, gibbons, great apes, and humans are all in the superfamily Hominoidea. Within Hominoidea, there is the Hylobatidae family (gibbons) and the Hominidae, which is great apes and humans. Within Hominidae, it splits again between subfamilies Ponginae (orangutans) and Homininae (African great apes and humans). Here's a diagram showing the phylogeny for primates: http://genomics.senescence.info/evolution/primates.gif

Note that gibbons (Hylobates lar) are in a different family than humans and great apes, but are still considered apes because they are members of the superfamily Hominoidea. In this taxonomy, humans are considered to be closer to the great apes than gibbons, but gibbons are still considered apes. It would be odd to say that humans aren't apes, but are closer to the great apes than another kind of ape.

Basically though this is all terminological. Most people willl separate humans from apes just for convenience of recognition. Also, many people who study human evolution are studying the differences between humans and other apes so they separate humans and apes. It's a difference between the technical and the everyday. When many people use the word animals, they don't usually refer to humans but humans are animals. Technically, the correct term is non-human animals but its really not necessary to say that in everyday language.

Orefa

I doubt this very much. Gosh, I would love my dog to be a bit smarter than he is. I think humans in general would be fascinated to see any species evolve to become intelligent. Imagine the dialogues we could have! The conversationist in every one of us would definitely want to preserve an intelligent species. The only reason to eliminate it would be if survival is at stake. But a new sentient species would not just pop up armed and organised, ready to eradicate all humans. There would be plenty of time to learn to coexist.

Orefa

Did I say conversationist? I meant conservationist, though it works that other way too...

pivoxa15

Wikipedia said that humans are apes. So apes are the superfamily which would have descended from a common ancestor a long time ago. What I like to know is what that ancestor was.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apes

The presenter might have tried to simplify things when he claimed that we descended from the apes. He wasn't wrong though because our ancestors were ape creatures but these ape creatures do not exist today. The controversy might have been cleared had he tried to mention earlier ancestors which were not even apes.

selfAdjoint

The scientific name for the family of species that includes the great apes and us is Primates. Here is a site on early primates.

hypnagogue

But the "Primate" category also includes monkeys and lemurs, no? It looks to me like the most specific category that classifies great apes and humans together is the family Hominidae (eg see here). If you want a broader category that categorizes all apes together, then it's the superfamily Hominoidea.

selfAdjoint

Quote from the site:
The inclusion of the great apes in the hominidae is surely a novelty and perhaps suggests a bias in the site? In any case if you go back to the Miocene, you should find a common ancestor for all the primates, no?

FeynmanMH42

I thought we are descended from prehistoric apes, and so are modern apes? i.e. us and the apes have a common ancestor which was also an ape?