If we're descended from apes, why are there still apes around?

From EvoWiki

Contents 1 Claim 2 Source 3 Responses 4 Fallacies contained in this claim 5 External Links 6 Further Reading 7 Related claims 8 See Also 9 Acknowledgments

Claim

If we are descended from apes, why are there still apes around?

Source

• "ZeroX", posting in BattleForums [1]
• "NOW", posting in perspectives.com [2]
• "Penny", posting in Unsolved Mysteries [3] or Angelsfeather [4] (different "discussion boards" with identical purely creationist content)

Responses

1. The claim is akin to asking "If my grandparents emigrated from Europe, why are Europeans still around?"
2. Modern humans did not descend from modern apes. Modern humans and modern apes had a common ancestor species that has since gone extinct.
3. Speciation does not demand or even require that every member of a parent population be changed or go extinct. Speciation generally occurs in a subpopulation that becomes reproductively isolated from the main group. Therefore, both the parent species and the daughter species can exist simultaneously.
4. This claim is probably based on a misunderstanding of the concept of natural selection. The claimant thinks that according to the theory of evolution, a species evolves from another because it has higher fitness than that species, so all individuals of the old species should have either evolved into the new one or died out. But fitness is always related to the environment. Non-human apes do well in their environment (tropical rainforests). Our ancestors moved onto the plains and adapted well for that environment. Both forms of life are successful for different reasons and in different environments.
5. The person who uses this claim also seems to assume that humans are not themselves apes. Homo sapiens is a species of ape in the exact same way H. sapiens is a species of mammal and a species of gnathostome vertebrate.
6. Creationist think-tank Answers in Genesis agrees that this claim is useless, and is on their list of arguments that should not be used.

Fallacies contained in this claim

• Composition ("if some apes evolved to humans, then all apes must have evolved to humans")
• Equivocation (apes in this argument implies 'modern apes', rather than 'the ape-like common ancestor of humans and modern apes')
• Straw Man (inaccurate models of descendancy and natural selection)
• Misrepresenting the Facts

External Links

• Mark Isaak's page for this claim [5]
• Foley, Jim, 2002. Fossil Hominids: Frequently Asked Questions [6]
• AIG, n.d. Arguments we think creationists should NOT use. [7]

Further Reading

• Darwin, C., 1872. The Origin of Species, 1st Edition. Senate, London, chpt. 4. [8]

Related claims

• One suggested ancestry line for humans is: Lucy, Heidelberg Man, Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man, Peking Man, Neanderthal Man, New Guinea Man, Cro-Magnon Man, Modern Man
• New Guinea Man dates way back to 1970 and has been found in the region just north to Australia

See Also

• Why is Creationism not a Scientific Theory?
• Theory of Evolution

Acknowledgments

• 169.204.239.122
• Thomas Kettenring