• Question: Will animals evolve as well? Will new animals be formed?

    Asked by salma to Sam, Vera, Steve on 21 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by 29905340hw.
    • Photo: Steven Daly

      Steven Daly answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      All life evolves, no matter what animal they are. Every living thing evolved from one species of bacteria that lived 3.5 billion years ago. Not only this but for fast-lived species who can produce new generations quickly we can actually see evolution taking place. One example of this is drug-resistant bacteria, which have evolved from their non-drug resistant relatives due to our overuse of antibiotics.

    • Photo: Vera Weisbecker

      Vera Weisbecker answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      I agree with Steve – where there is (reproducing) life, there is evolution and there will always be new animals being formed!

    • Photo: Sam Tazzyman

      Sam Tazzyman answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Evolution, as the other say, is an ongoing process wherever there is life. So currently there are species that are breaking up into several other species. The splitting of one species into two or more different species is called “speciation” and scientists are still investigating the details of how it works. One problem is that it often happens very slowly (taking thousands of years) so people can’t really watch it happen. But there are some examples which could be one species slowly turning into several. One that I have worked on is a poisonous frog from Panama in Central America. On a collection of small islands near the coast there the frog can be found in an amazing variety of colours, one for each island:

      These frogs are all the same species at the moment, but the females prefer to mate with males the same colour as them. In time these preferences could get so strong that the frogs on each island could become different species.

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