The astonishing aspect of the evolution is that all the present species of mammals (cetaceans, bats, felids, herbivores, primates) as well the Human, descend from the same mammals ancestors which lived in the world dominated by dinosaurs, 225 million years ago.
These common ancestors were small beings of size and aspect of a small rodents or a shrew, as the Morganucodon was:
Morganucodon
At that time there were no other forms of mammals. The big reptiles ruled the world. We small mice were confined in our small niche, without possibility to expand.
For 140 million years we mammals have existed only under this form, and we lived in the shadow of dinosaurs. Only after the extinction of dinosaurs, 65 millions of years ago, these small mice could begin to differentiate in so many different species, as they are today.
This should never be forgotten when thinking about where the Human actually comes from. The part of the story related to Primates is only the very last and infinitesimal fragment of the path.
Now let’s take a look to how the front limbs of the mammals got modified, during the long process of mutations and selections in the last 225 millions of years.
This is the front limb of a mouse, very similar to our ancestors of 225 million years ago.
It looks surprisingly similar to our hand, just much smaller and looks sweeter to touch:)
Remember about this, before to despise again a mouse or rat.
Now let’s look in this chart, how these tiny and nice hands have got modified, mutation after mutation:
Download the chart as PDF file (Right mouse click -> save link as)
Download the editable.odg file (LibreOffice Draw file format)
Now, an elementary question
Which of these hands did a greater transformation job, starting from the common ancestor hand?
Which of these transformations did require a major number of mutations and selections to get to their present form?
…Surely not the hands of Primates and of the Homo Sapiens!
All these extremely different limbs have originated starting from the same small hands mouse-like.
And the narcissist Homo Sapiens self admires its hands, which are almost identical to those of apes, and which have changed very modestly from the common ancestors’ hand, in comparison to how much the other species changed.
The cetaceans made a fin of it, the bats made a wing, the felids added a moving structure where it didn’t existed. (The mechanism to pull out the claws)
Those can be defined evolved hands! That is an admirable evolutionary work and should be admired and respected by the Homo Sapiens.
The evolutionary work, or better the “evolutionary effort”, can be defined as the amount of small changes which occurred a specie during its history.
Considering the history of the life on the Earth overall, the transition from apes to Homo Sapiens is the smallest and less significant part of the work, the 0,000001% or less.
The 99,999999% of the efforts, from the first elementary cells in the sea to apes, has been done by all the other species lived before us.
All the other species which live around us today are the direct descendants of these crucial ancestors which signed all the ‘evolutionary’ steps before us, and thy reflects these all the steps of the story.
Therefore we should be extremely respectful and thankful to all the other species around us, because they are actually our parents. Without their accomplished evolutionary work, we would not be here!
It’s not a kind of philosophy, it’s a fact!