地球疑问：为什么类人猿未变成为人

　　Planet of the Humans: Why Haven't Apes Evolved into Humans?

　　Virginia and her guest, Johnson, have just watched Planet of the Apes on DVD:

　　J: Hmm. Apes that evolve into something humanlike? Pretty unlikely, methinks.

　　V: Definitely. Evolution within a species or family of species does not have to increase in complexity.

　　J: Right. If it did, every fish in the ocean would now have limbs and live on land.

　　V: Exactly. Because countless ecological opportunities remained for fish underwater, plenty of them remained aquatic.

　　J: Another thing: the most developed species, like humans and apes, are products of a very specific combination of selection pressures and genetic mutations over millions of years. There’s no reason why such a combination will repeat itself.

　　V: Right. Planet of the Apes simply exploits the fallacy1 that present-day apes are traveling down the same evolutionary path as ourselves.

　　J: When it’s widely accepted among scientists that at some point five to eight million years ago, humans and apes diverged2 to form the two separate species we know today.

　　V: Yeah. As descendants of a common ancestor, apes are our evolutionary cousins.

　　J: The main bone of contention3 remaining among the boffins4 is which species in the fossil record is the so-called“missing link.”

　　V: What John say? Virginia not understand.

　　弗吉尼亚和客人约翰逊刚刚看完DVD影片《决战猩球》：

　　约翰逊：嗯，类人猿进化成和人类一样？我想不太可能。

　　弗吉尼亚：当然，某一物种或某一群物种的进化不一定增加其复杂性。

　　约翰逊：对，如果会增加复杂性，那海里的鱼现在就应该长了四肢，住在陆地上了。

　　弗吉尼亚：没错。因为海底的生态环境仍然为水族提供了无尽的生存机会，所以很多鱼仍然是水栖动物。

　　约翰逊：还有，最先进的物种，比如人类和类人猿，是数百万年前物竞天择的压力和基因突变两者结合作用下的产物。这种结合未必会再次发生。

　　弗吉尼亚：对，《决战猩球》采用了另类推论，认为当今类人猿的演化途径和人类是相同的。

　　约翰逊：科学家们已经广泛地接受了以下观点：约在500万到800万年以前，人类和类人猿分别进化成为目前我们所知道的这两个物种。

　　弗吉尼亚：是啊，类人猿和我们来自同一祖先，他们可以算是我们的表兄弟姐妹呢！

　　约翰逊：科学家们目前主要争论的焦点是，化石纪录中的哪个物种才是所谓的“失去的一环”。[注1]

　　弗吉尼亚：约翰逊说什么？弗吉尼亚不懂。[注2]

　　[注1]：missing link：(相关联的整个事物中)缺少的一环，指介于类人猿与人类之间的假想灵长类动物。

　　[注2]：这句话是模仿“泰山电影式语言”，类似“Dumb apes speak”。