• Question: Did all animals originate from one animal? Is so, is this why some animals are more intelligent than others?

    Asked by invalidusername to Charlotte, Jo, Kevin, Louise, Valeria on 15 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by niamhgreene10.
    • Photo: Joanna Cruden

      Joanna Cruden answered on 15 Jun 2012:

      The fossil record shows the gradual emergence of different and generally more complex species over time.

      They did not come from an original single source. It is just natural selection which makes some animals more intelligence than others.

      The intelligence can also be due to environment and upbringing and what they have been exposed to in their life

    • Photo: Kevin Mahon

      Kevin Mahon answered on 16 Jun 2012:

      I have to disagree – many statistical models that evolutionary theorists have worked on show that it is more likely that all life, not just animals, originated from a single common ancestor, as opposed to multiple sources.

      The idea that all life shares a common ancetor is quite a central theory to evolutionary biology, and currently it is our understanding that this ancestor was likely a single celled primordial organism.

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