• Question: do you think evolution can still exist even though monkeys are not turning into humans today? And even if it takes mills of years, a million years ago was it still "happening"?????

    Asked by fatinandrichie to Andrew, Daniel, Hayley, Natalia, Peta on 18 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Daniel Scully

      Daniel Scully answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      Evolution takes place through two main mechanisms: natural selection and random genetic mutations.

      If evolution ever took place then those mechanisms are still are taking place today, but like you say it takes millions of years so you’ll never notice any changes in your lifetime.

      Natural selection should always mean that evolution improves animals, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily taking the same route as humans. It’s also possible to end up in an “evolutionary dead-end”, where small changes can never lead to certain improvements.

      The evidence for evolution is pretty overwhelming. I don’t think there’s any serious scientific debate on whether it exists.

    • Photo: Andrew Cairns

      Andrew Cairns answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      Both humans and monkeys are evolving, but they have been set on different paths by some random, possibly genetic, mutation in the past. The chance of present day monkeys mutating into humans is therefore very very small indeed.

      That is not to say random selection isn’t happening, although probably less in humans than in monkeys.

    • Photo: Hayley Smith

      Hayley Smith answered on 18 Nov 2011:

      I think that evolution can still exist but the effects are quite small – for instance, it always confuses me that as humans we have the mouth that we both put food down and breathe through – to me, this doesn’t seem that sensible and can often lead to uncomfotable situations when something goes a little wrong. Wouldn’t it be better if we evolved to have better separated functions? Well, this may still be evolutionarily possible – although you can often see this in nature, when something reaches a solution that is reasonable and workable it doesn’t seem to get very far in improving it further. Maybe it will happen in time – who knows!

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