The BBC has a story up about the opening of the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath. Included in the article us a 7 question quiz on evolution. Question 5 is “Humans are descended from monkeys. True or false.” answer correctly (true) and you will be told that you are wrong:
This is wrong–yes, humans and all apes are evolved from monkeys. The most recent common ancestor between modern apes and modern monkeys is a monkey. And the apes branched more recently from the Old World Monkeys than the Old World Monkeys branched from the New World Monkeys. (The common ancestor of both of those branches was also a monkey.)
Now, if this was a screwup by the BBC, that wouldn’t be suprising. But what is more disturbing is if this accurately reflects what Paula Kover of The University of Bath told the BBC, and what they are teaching at The Milner Center. i sent the BBC the following email–who knows if there will be a correction:
I used to be one of those people who would object if you called a gorilla or a chimpanzee a “monkey”. “Those aren’t monkeys, those are apes!” But I was wrong about that. Gorillas and chimpanzees are apes; but they’re also monkeys. And, since humans are also apes, we are also therefore monkeys. (All apes are monkeys; but of course not all monkeys are apes. All humans are apes; not all apes are humans.)
Here is the family tree for the primates. Note those two groups, the Platyrrhini and the Catarrhini, who split off from the tarsiers. This little guy is from the Platyrrhini. He’s obviously a monkey; anyone would agree “Hey, that’s a monkey!” (Specifically, he’s a capuchin monkey, AKA the “organ grinder monkey”, a downright iconic monkey.) She is also a monkey, right? She’s a “rhesus macaque” (or what I used to just call a “rhesus monkey”), which again is an extremely well-known monkey. She’s from the Catarrhini branch of the monkeys.
From this website we can get an idea of when any two species diverged from each other. The last common ancestor of the rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) and the white-headed capuchin (Cebus capucinus) probably lived about 42.6 million years ago. But the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Macaca mulatta was only around 28.1 million years ago. And the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Cebus capucinus was…about 42.6 million years ago, at the same time as the LCA of Cebus capucinus and Macaca mulatta. Unsurprisingly, the LCA of Pan troglodytes (the common chimpanzee) and Cebus capucinus clocks in at 42.6 million years ago, while (of course) the LCA of Pan troglodytes and Macaca mulatta was around 28.1 million years ago, same as it was for Homo sapiens and Macaca mulatta.
We are from the chimpanzee/human branch of the African great apes. We (the chimpanzees and the humans, and also the gorillas) are African great apes, as opposed to Asian great apes (the orangutans). We are great apes (with the orangutans), as opposed to gibbons. We great apes along with the gibbons form the “ape” branch of the Old World monkeys. Together with our 42.6 million-years-ago distant cousins, the New World Monkeys, we are all monkeys (as opposed to tarsiers, or lemurs). And of course all of us monkeys, tarsiers, and lemurs are primates; primates are mammals; mammals are vertebrates; vertebrates are animals; animals are eukaryotes; eukaryotes are life-forms from planet Earth. (If there’s anything beyond “all life on Earth” we haven’t found it yet. And of course that’s leaving out a lot of complications and additional branch points like “synapsids” and “chordates” and “deuterostomes” and much much more.)
Humans are “descended from monkeys” because we are monkeys.
I think the intent was to say that humans didn’t evolve from chimpanzees, which is accurate and fits in better with the rest of the sentence. Somebody either miswrote the first line or it was written correctly and somebody further down the line edited it into error.
I understand the point you’re making and I don’t dispute your facts. I’m just questioning whether it’s accurate to say that humans and other apes are still monkey just because our evolutionary line branched off from monkeys. After all, if you go back far enough, our evolutionary line branched off from fish. But nobody would argue that homo sapiens are fish. It’s clear that at some point an evolutionary line can pass beyond an old classification.
My understanding (and I’ll readily concede I’m not a zoologist) is that monkeys and apes are both simians. Monkeys were the first type of simian to evolve and therefore at one point all simians were monkeys. Then some monkeys evolved into apes and effectively ceased to be monkeys so that there are now two separate branches of simians.
Yep. right answer - badly formed question. The answer even conflates chimps and monkeys - the intent appears to have been to ask if humans evolved from modern-day species of monkey.
I think it is nit-picking and the question as it stands is not “wrong” but merely incomplete.
It seems clear that the point being made is that humans did not evolve from what we see and label as a “monkey” today. We can’t point to an extant creature and say “we evolved from that” and it is clear from the question phrasing that it is referring to extant species.
I know the primate evolutionary tree fairly well and if someone said that humans are not descended from monkeys I’d know exactly what they meant and accept it for the general truth that it is.
The misconception that arises is that evolution can be regarded as a progression from a more primitive species to a more evolved one, in exactly the sense that modern homo sapiens originated from the chimpanzee-human Last Common Ancestor. If one states that “humans evolved from monkeys”, the natural objection is, “so why are there still monkeys?”. Referring instead to a common ancestor is more precise.
Wikipedia says “Monkeys are non-hominoid simians”. I don’t think we can generally call humans “monkeys”. How about:
The line of evolution from which humans arose goes back to simple multicellular organisms. Somewhere along that line of evolution we passed through as animals that in today’s terms we would call a kind of monkey.
but not precisely the same monkey as exists today. We didn’t evolve *from * the monkeys we see now and that seems to be the misconception that the question seeks to challenge.
Sure, but so what? This is not a point about evolutionary biology, it’s a point about language, and how some words convey greater clarity than others, and are less susceptible to misunderstanding.
If someone hears “we’re descended from monkeys”, you can’t really blame them for a certain skepticism that we’re descended from the creatures that they just saw at the zoo today. Because of course we’re not. We’re descended from a more primitive common ancestor that gave rise, along different evolutionary paths, both to modern monkeys and to homo sapiens.
The obvious answer is that I’m descended from my parents. But my parents are still around. And my siblings are also descended from my parents. But I am not my siblings.
Yes, that’s how I see it. The last part, about modern-day species does seem to be what they are getting at. Conflated chimps and monkeys is technically OK, but if you’re going to do it in front of the general public, you need to be clear why you are doing it. But best not to go there as it just makes thing more difficult to understand.
Better answer: Humans and all living species of apes and monkeys are descended from a common ancestor. This common ancestor would be called a monkey, but it would NOT be the same as any species of monkey that we would see today.
If you show someone both an Old World Monkey and a New World Monkey, they would say “yep, those are monkeys.” This very strongly suggests that the common ancestor between the two branches–if brought forward in time–would still be obviously to everyone a monkey.
Right. Like wolfpup said, this is a problem with language, not science. Is “monkey” a paraphyletic term meaning “the common ancestor of Old World and New World monkeys and its descendants, excluding apes”? Or, is it a monophyletic term meaning “the common ancestor of Old World and New World monkeys and its descendants”? Once we decide what we’re talking about, we can answer the question.
This sort of issue often shows up when scientist apply specific definitions to words with more general usage. Neither usage is wrong, but it can make communication more difficult.
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