From Spout Off in the Daily News: “I am sure I am just an idiot who doesn’t understand evolution, but if we evolved from apes, why are there still apes?”
Setting aside the writer’s self-assessment of his intelligence, there are two reasons:
A)We didn’t evolve from any of the apes now existing, but from some common ancestor.
B)Because evolution isn’t a magic wand that transformed apes into people. Evolution by natural selection means that in any generation there will be a certain variation between offspring—some are taller, some are heavier, some run faster, etc.
In the case of our ancestors, that variation meant some offspring were very good at living the way their parents did (foraging in forests, hanging from trees, whatever). Others found it easier to find food by doing things a little differently. Their offspring were more different still. And so over time, they diverged completely from the ancestral stock. But that doesn’t mean the ancestral stock goes away.
And that’s why there are still apes.

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