Questions about Gorillas?

[John Harmonic]

Which species did Gorillas evolve from and also do they share a common ancestor with humans?

 

Why do you think Gorillas evolved to be muscular, big and strong and physically the way they are?

[delboy]

You haven't defined how far you want to go back in asking what they evolved from. The answer would be very different depending on this. I am assuming you are after another species of ape.

In any case these things are impossible to define. Because the evolutionary tree is always constantly branching, and fossil records are very patchy, it can never be said for sure if something is a true ancestor or just a 'cousin'. 

And as far as I know there are no (or very few) fossils of recent ancestors of gorillas.

Every living thing shares an ancestor with humans including bacteria. Again, it just depends how far you go back. The most recent common ancestor is what you're after and our most recent ancestor with gorillas existed around 7 million years ago (cf Chimp - 6 million, orang utan - 14 million)

[John Harmonic]

Thanks.

[mistermack]

3 hours ago, John Harmonic said:

Why do you think Gorillas evolved to be muscular, big and strong and physically the way they are?

The most likely explanation is their diet. They eat big quantities of lower quality food, so they need a big gut to hold it and digest it. A big gut needs a big body to match. There's no reason that an ape shouldn't grow big, if there's a food niche to exploit. There was an extinct huge ape that lived alongside early man called Gigantopithecus. Estimates of it's size are up to nearly ten feet tall and half a ton in weight. 

[zapatos]

4 hours ago, John Harmonic said:

 

Why do you think Gorillas evolved to be muscular, big and strong and physically the way they are?

 

Because it was advantageous to their survival. Same reason all other species evolved the way they did.

[CharonY]

48 minutes ago, mistermack said:

The most likely explanation is their diet. They eat big quantities of lower quality food, so they need a big gut to hold it and digest it. A big gut needs a big body to match. There's no reason that an ape shouldn't grow big, if there's a food niche to exploit. There was an extinct huge ape that lived alongside early man called Gigantopithecus. Estimates of it's size are up to nearly ten feet tall and half a ton in weight. 

So low quality feed eaters have to be large. Like rabbits, I presume.