First of all, and I mean this as kindly as I can phrase it, you clearly don’t understand the theory of evolution on virtually any level. The basic gist is this: evolution involves the change in genetic information in a given species in a given area over successive generations. This change in genetic information occurs in mutations, which occur naturally and essentially randomly. Consider, for example, a modern and well known example of a mutation in genetic information: cancer. One’s DNA is constantly coped and re-copied as your cells divide to form new ones and replace old ones. For instance, your skin cells are falling off of your body all the time, replaced by new skin cells. Consider when you get a cut and your wound heals; DNA is constantly being copied, over and over again, as cells divide and form new cells to replace those that were destroyed in your injury. Now, sometimes this copying process can be disturbed, through numerous different factors, from exposure to a particular substance or chemical to random mutations. Cancer can be a result of either. The cellular replication is at some point sent awry, which is really understandable; your DNA is being copied millions of times a year. Sometimes this genetic mutation can be harmful, and this is, in a general sense, what we term Cancer”. This is just one example of genetic mutation.
Now, some mutations are not harmful. Some mutations simply… are. Like double-jointedness or synæsthesia; these are the results of something at some point in a given individual’s DNA did not copy properly, added a gene or left out a gene or replaced a gene with another, one protein failed to activate properly, whatever. Some mutations can even be beneficial. For example, if I am a nut-eating bird and something mutates in my DNA causing the beaks of all of my chicks (all of whom contain some of my DNA) to have sturdier, rounder beaks, I might find that my chicks are able to eat more nuts than the birds with pointier beaks, who don’t have the ability to crack them open as well. To that extent, the mutation allowed my chicks to have a higher chance of surviving. These round-beaked chicks eventually mate and produce other chicks who also share this DNA, and also have rounded beaks. These chicks also have a better chance at surviving than the pointed beaked birds. Eventually, the birds that have the rounder beaks survive, while the birds that were less able to obtain food died out. You have just seen a generalized image of evolution. Now, imagine that these mutations occur over and over again all the way down the lines of generations of birds. A hundred years later, another genetic mutation gives some birds better and stronger wings, making tem able to fly farther and faster. Therefore they are able to get away from predators better than the weaker ones. Eventually, it is these birds who survive, resulting now in round-beaked birds with strong wings. You see the concept? The idea is that natural changes in genetic information over many generations result in some species surviving better than others. This is called natural selection. Over time, various aspects of the organisms change, causing this aspect or that to “evolve”. A bird species that started out with pointed beaks and small, weak wings has “evolved” into a bird species with round beaks and strong, powerful wings.
Evidence for this can be found in the fossil record. We see skeletal remains of a species at one period in time, and gradually, we notice that the fossils’ structures change, even if very, very slightly at first. Over time, these changes become more and more apparent until the new species is completely different from its older ancestor. But why do pointed-beaked birds still exist? One answer is that some of the species migrated. The birds who stayed behind did not need strong wings and did not need to eat nuts, but found that pointier beaks were more useful. Therefore those birds with that genetic mutation for rounder beaks did not, in fact, survive as well there, whereas they DID survive, say, three hundred miles away, where conditions were different and nuts were their main source of food. You now have two species, one evolved from the other, existing simultaneously. Now, this logic can be extrapolated to human beings. We observe in the fossil record changes in primate skeletal structures over a long period of time, and also notice that the skeletal structure of the human does not appear in the fossil record until about 200,000 years ago. Prior to that, we see over time an increasingly more humanlike succession of skeletal fossils, culminating ultimately in the modern Homo sapiens. The term “ape” is a bit misleading, inasmuch as it is much too general. Human beings are part of the superfamily hominoidea, which includes some of the great apes.
The presence of other primate species “in jungles and zoos” is explained with the same reasoning I used above with the birds. Some species of primates moved to other areas, while others stayed behind or moved somewhere else. One of these groups of primates, under given conditions, evolved ultimately into the modern human, while other primate groups did not, and they still survive today. Even the apes we observe nowadays have undergone their own evolution, and simply did not develop the complexity of Homo sapiens; every species experiences evolution over time, some to a greater extent than others. This, in a nutshell, explains evolution, though I am generalizing for the sake of brevity.
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