Can monkeys today evolve into humans in the future?

Evolution is a very important knowledge. A science blogger I like very much once said that I can accept or even judge whether this person has a healthy and rational world outlook.

An important reason to prevent the public from accepting the theory of evolution is the misunderstanding of evolution, which is very deceptive; If you have heard some theories of evolution from many popular science channels, you will find that evolution is very easy to understand, resulting in the illusion that "I can also reason about the world according to this idea". So many ordinary readers have come up with some so-called "evidence" to refute the theory of evolution, but in fact, the theory of evolution in their minds is not the same as the scientific theory of evolution at all.

Evolutionary misunderstanding-this is not upgrading the computer.

Today, I want to dismantle a common misunderstanding about evolution: is evolution more advanced and powerful? Then why haven't monkeys evolved into adults?

According to my habit-give a conclusion first, then analyze: evolution has a direction, but not all species will evolve complex structures, and monkeys will never evolve into adults.

be desperate ...

Because we are socialized animals, I want to explain this problem in a more secular way, which is more efficient than any other way. For example, we use the familiar workplace. Is there a direction for promotion? Of course, generally speaking, motivated young people want to be promoted from front-line employees to grass-roots managers, then to department managers, then to middle managers, and finally, of course, to bosses. So will everyone go this way? Of course not. We all know that the company's structure is pyramid-shaped, with the most grass-roots units and only one boss. In the real world, many people are front-line employees all their lives, and many people will not be promoted when they reach a certain rank. Why is this?

In fact, the basis of this question is very simple. Even if the top candidates in the national college entrance examination gather in a classroom, as long as it is an exam, one can still be separated (full marks are faster than handing in papers), and one person will always be the last one. Aren't they strong enough? No, but because there is only one first place, and the last place must exist. It is the most cruel and ironclad fact that everyone should put one person in the leaderboard. Back to the workplace, of course, this is because the boss only needs one, and the grassroots employees may need tens of thousands. This structure determines that no matter how hard everyone works, they can't all be bosses.

Rankings are everywhere.

Niche, the source power of biological evolution

This kind of thing similar to position is called "niche" in evolution, that is, the position where a species stays in the ecological structure, which is the basis of species existence and the source of evolution.

What determines the niche? In fact, it is easy to understand, that is, "there is a mouth to eat." For example, we hate flies, and their larvae feed on rotten organic matter and feces, which is very disgusting to humans (in fact, humans are a special case, and the behavior of animals eating feces is quite common). This is the niche of flies, because these odorous organic substances are also a kind of energy, with rich sources and acceptable nutrition. If they can be fully utilized, they can fully support the survival of a species.

housefly

Species, niche and environment are interactive. For example, in Proterozoic 10 billion years ago, when the earth was dominated by microorganisms, there was naturally no niche for flies, because there was no "corpse and excrement". It is for this reason that after the emergence of multicellular organisms, the world suddenly became rich and colorful, because many niches were made out of nothing, which is also one of the explanations for the "Cambrian life explosion".

The so-called CAMBRIAN life explosion refers to a geological historical period called CAMBRIAN about 530 million years ago, when all kinds of animals suddenly appeared on the earth for more than 20 million years (very short compared with the life history), and before that, there were almost no animals (at least no related fossils were found). Since then, although the history of life has experienced five mass extinctions, the ecology is still developing in an increasingly rich direction.

Evolution is driven by the birth of a new niche. For example, the company is too young to rent an office building and only needs employees, but it has grown stronger and stronger. If you buy a building yourself, you must recruit security guards. In biology, it is impossible to "recruit" a new species out of thin air, but a branch appears in the existing species, and the species of this branch will evolve to adapt to the characteristics of the new niche.

Bees fly. It can better protect itself by imitating bees.

Let's take flies as an example. In fact, the families of flies are not just those that are common, and the feeding habits of flies depend on their species. There are bees that suck nectar and plant juice, and there are also people who are addicted to the same kind, and they are addicted to animal blood (gadfly) or animal wound blood and eye and nose secretions. We usually see houseflies, golden flies, Lucilia sericata, Calliphora and Hemp flies. In order to adapt to the survival of scavengers, they have evolved several protein with strong resistance to bacteria, so they can occupy this niche with peace of mind.

Blood-sucking gadfly

If one day all flies are suddenly wiped out by a kind of magic, there will be several huge ecologists, and other insects will certainly evolve in this direction and eventually become the successors of flies. In other words, as long as there is a vacant niche, it will be filled by one or several species, which is very similar to low-lying water. No matter how big or small the depression is, as long as it can hold water, it will certainly become a miniature lake.

As long as it is lower than the surrounding area, there will be puddles, and as long as there is a mouth to eat, life will evolve in this direction.

Therefore, we know that evolution itself does not have a clear general direction, which can be seen from the fact that almost all animals will have some organ degradation in the process of evolution. For example, the mole, which has adapted to underground life for a long time, has lost its vision, which is an extremely important organ necessary for almost all complex animals. This is because in the underground cave niche, the eye is just a disruptive organ. Therefore, creatures are not necessarily smarter and more complex, as long as they are more suitable for their close niche, and even degradation is part of evolution.

Optimal solution-convergent evolution

Although evolution has no direction in macro, it has a clear direction in details, which is easy to understand. Because there may be only one best form that is most suitable for a certain niche, there have been many phenomena in the history of biology that are obviously different routes but have evolved the same characteristics. This phenomenon is called convergent evolution. The most important example is the eye. At least two different routes have evolved complex eyes that can be optically zoomed, which I also introduced in my last article. Interested friends can have a look. In another unique niche, this tendency is also very obvious.

Two kinds of eyes evolved separately.

What kind of minority has unique characteristics? The top of the pyramid, of course. We call it the top predator. According to the terrestrial creatures of our time, these animals all have the same characteristics-sharp teeth, sharp claws and slender bodies. This is true everywhere, because almost all the top predators are cats and dogs now. But there are exceptions, that is, marsupials and marsupials (now extinct) have appeared in Australia, an isolated natural evolution laboratory.

In Gugonwana, they are all connected, and Antarctica is connected with Australia.

Australia was separated from the ancient continent 53 million years ago, so this continent has a completely independent ecological structure. Although the two animals mentioned above have "wolf" and "lion" in their names, they are not related to cats and dogs, because cats and dogs only evolved 35 million years ago. The marsupial wolf is a secondary animal of Carnivora. Among the existing animals, marsupials and anteaters are close relatives, while marsupials are secondary animals among blind animals. The living close relatives are koalas, kangaroos and bees.

Nothing like it.

As long as you see their photos, you will understand the origin of such a name, because they really look too much like wolves and lions, but they have evolved very similar physiological structures, which proves that the physiological structures of top predators on land are not too many possibilities; If cats and canines had not evolved, the animals occupying this niche today would not be much different from liger jackals in appearance, which is the evidence of the direction of evolution.

On the upper left is a marsupial lion, and on the lower left is a honeydew melon.

Now let's go back to the original question. I believe you will understand something after reading this article. Of course, monkeys will not evolve into humans, because monkeys occupy the niche of "small and medium-sized animals that live in trees and feed on fruits, young leaves and insects". They live well in this niche and have no motivation to evolve. Just as the water in a puddle will not spontaneously jump out to look for a new puddle, most people's fantasy of evolution-a process of spontaneous evolution to a more "advanced" or "complex" structure will certainly not be staged.

A small animal enjoying insects-tarsier.

Some optimal solutions can last for hundreds of millions of years.

There are many creatures called "living fossils" in today's world. It is precisely because their physiological structure is so adapted to their niche that they have not changed much in tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of years. For example, the Darwinian horseshoe crab in the late Jurassic and the American horseshoe crab now look almost the same, and the difference can be148 million years!

There are only slight differences between Darwin's horseshoe crab and American horseshoe crab.

The successful evolution of mankind can be said to be an accident. Other anthropoid suborder species that are more successful than us or may replace us in parallel worlds have been extinct by our ancestors. Now, in the ecological structure of the earth, this niche belonging to the "great ape" has been occupied by 7 billion humans, and it is impossible to accommodate new species (in fact, we have severely squeezed the niche of other animals, especially top predators, such as the extinct South China Tiger).

A multi-intelligent life and a prosperous world can only exist in human imagination.

This is the essence that monkeys will never evolve into adults, and it is also the fundamental reason that a second intelligent life will never be born on earth. For example, many intelligent beings (humans, elves, goblins, orcs, dwarves, goblins, etc. ) will never appear in the animation theme, because once intelligent life appears, this species will overload the whole niche with overwhelming advantages in a very short time.