Did humans really evolve from apes?

When someone talks of evolution, there are people that automatically associate the evolution of men with the other primates. Questions like "Did humans really evolve from apes?" is constantly shouted in some parts of the world and the answer is simple: No, humans did not evolve from apes, humans are apes.
Well, the expression "Ape" is relative to all the individuals that are presently in the Superfamily Hominoidea, that contains two families: The Hylobatidae, or the family of the lesser apes, and the Hominidae, described as the great apes, where humans are included.
The correct observation is that humans and the other apes evolved from the same ancestor. This ancestor, would have been a primate, similar to many others still existing today, which individuals would have diverged, so that today many kinds of apes could exist.
As to the evolution of Man, it was first discussed by Darwin himself in his followup book "A Descent of Man" (1871), where he unfolded sexual selection.

Evolution in Disney

Mickey Mouse has evolved. This was noticed and brough to the world by Stephen J. Gould in his book, "The Panda's Thumb", deserving a whole chapter.
As you can see, in this case, Mickey Mouse is not portraited as an individual, but as a population, or species of consecutive Mickeys. The Mickeys started to suffer small changes and, since they were successful (the character became more dear to the public) they kept those traits, by a special kind of natural selection.

And what traits are those that make Mickey each time more a favourite of people? The traits of a child! The chubby, big eyed, big headed, rounder mouse has been becoming everytime more like the being we instinctively tend to love and protect: our kids.

Hurray for the bees!!

Honey is one of the oldest food sources we know. This fascinating fluid is created by honey bees from the nectar of flowers. Let’s see what sciensational stuff we have for honey and the great honey bees.

Honey does not spoil.
Honeybees have remained unchanged in form or structure for 20 million years.

This is perhaps one of the greatest properties of honey. You could place it anywhere for thousands of years and it will not spoil. In fact, edible honey was found in ancient Egyptian Pharaoh King Tut’s tomb!

Honey contains large amounts of fructose and glucose. Naturally this makes it an ideal sweetener – much sweeter – almost 20 to 60 per cent more – than sugar itself!

You would think that such a sweet thing would be so bad for your health. Not so at all! Honey does not have any fats or cholesterol. It does not contain any sodium either. You could actually live off a just-honey diet because it is considered to be the only kind of food that has all necessary substances to sustain a normal human life, though it would be quite boring to have nothing but honey, eh?

A honey bee could visit around 2000 flowers in a day, flying around 25 kilometers per hour! That’s not all. It would take about 2 million flowers for these little creatures to visit to make just half a kilogram of honey! Not only that, just one single honey bee colony can produce between 30 to 40 kilograms of honey in a year.

Biological Adaptation

In biology, the term "adaptation" is known as the process by which a living thing becomes better suited to its environment. 
This biological adaptation may be of very kind: Structural Adaptations, Functional Adaptations, Color Adaptations and Behavioral Adaptations.
When biologists talk about this term they also use to relate it to the word Survival. There's also the expression "Survival of the Fittest", the explanation is that an environment tends to eliminate living things that are not suited to it. A plant that was not adapted to conserve moisture would soon die in the desert; an animal that stood out from its surroundings would be the most likely to fall prey to its enemies. This process of elimination is called natural selection. The phrase “survival of the fittest” refers to natural selection. Natural selection is an important factor in evolution.

An example of adaptation involving natural selection is found in the case of DDT and houseflies. When this insecticide was first used in the early 1940's, almost all the flies subjected to it were killed. Some, however, survived and continued to reproduce. Eventually only this type of resistant fly was left in the areas where DDT was used over a period of years.

Adaptation is not voluntary, but is based on inherited traits. The diversity of inherited traits is chiefly a result of mutation. Mutation is any change in the inherited characteristics of an organism which results in new traits that will be passed on to the organism's descendants. In any given environment, some traits will be advantageous and others will not. (In forests, the ability of an animal to climb trees might be an adaptation for survival, but on open grasslands speed would be more advantageous.) The organism that is best suited to its environment is most likely to survive and reproduce, and the traits that are not advantageous tend gradually to be eliminated.

Well, in our case that's how we survived, by evolving:

10 facts about human body

Here's a top list of some humand body facts:

1 - Of the 206 bones in the human body, 1/4 are located in the feet.

2 - The human heart has to pump blood back and forth through the 70,000 miles of blood vessels in the body once every minute.

3 - The stomach has 35 million digestive glands.

4 - Human hair is almost indestructible. It cannot be destroyed by cold, climactic changes, water or other natural forces (except fire). It also can survive exposure to many kinds of acids and corrosive chemicals.

5 -There are 45 miles of nerves in the human body.

6 - It is impossible for a person to keep their eyes open while sneezing.

7 - Human eyes are capable of seeing more than 1 million simultaneous visual impressions and can distinguish between almost 8 million gradations of color.

8 - The amount of pigment melanin in a person’s skin determines what color their skin will be. People with very little melanin have light colored skin, while people with large amounts of melanin have skin that is dark in color.

9 - The human body consists of nine systems: the skeletal system  the muscular system, the nervous system, the hormonal system, the circulatory system, the digestive system, the respiratory system, the immune system and the reproductive system.

10 - The human body has 10 trillion cells living within it.

Allelopathy

The term allelopathy was created in 1937 by the investigator Hans Molisch to describe the way plants interact between them to understand the medium around them. The word results from the greek words allélon (mutual) and pathos (prejudice).

Plants produce and release a great number of molecules resulting from their secundary metabolisms, that are released in the environment, affecting the plants around, their growth, their development and even the germination of some species.

Game Theory

Game theory is the scientific study of puzzles and has been aplyed to almost all the sciencies that presume choice. Since John Maynard Smith, it has also been aplied to biology. Some of the most important games are the Dove-Hawk Game and the Prisioner's Dilemma.
The Dove-Hawk Game works on the assumption that doves lose against hawks feeding them, doves have a neutral aproach to each others and hawks just lose points on confrontation with each others.
You can find an explication here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAKjII7xCdk&feature=player_embedded