• Question: when do you think we will next evolve

    Asked by 1230matt9 to Hitesh, Hywel, Mae, Nik, Tiffany on 13 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Tiffany Taylor

      Tiffany Taylor answered on 13 Jun 2012:

      We are still evolving all the time. But, we are so clever that we can shape the world we live in to fit us, rather than having to fit into the world we live in like most wild animals. But evolution just means changes in the DNA overtime which are passed onto you children and these are passed onto their children, and so on. So If there is a change which makes you better at having more babies (because it makes you more attractive or more fertile, etc.) it is likely to be passed onto more people in the future, because more people will carry that gene, and they will also have more babies.

      It becomes more complicated with humans though because medicine allows people who would not normally have to chance to breed have babies, and our culture and society influences how many children we have. So we do not follow the same laws as in nature.

    • Photo: Mae Woods

      Mae Woods answered on 15 Jun 2012:

      Well evolution in large animals happens over millions of years, which means we do not evolve like a switch but we change slowly until two species split into two different types of species.

      We are probably evolving as I am writing this answer, but the changes take a long time to be obvious. I reckon in one million years people will look back on us and think we were really different to them!

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