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I know I'll have all the uber-intellegent rant on me for this...

My husband and I LOVE the science channel. We love anything to do with the planet, science, how things work, etc...

Last night they had a program on a homonid. I can't explain it, but it just didn't 'feel' right to me! A giraffe was still a giraffe (maybe slightly changed, but a giraffe nonetheless) 6 million years ago, but we (humans) have jumped species? I just don't get that? Why?

Why are humans different that we changed completely, while other animals, every other animal on earth for that matter, remained just that. An animal?

Now I don't think God said "poof" and there was the ocean, etc... And I do believe the earth is REAAAAALLLLLLLLYYYYYY old. Older than the Bible predicts, but were we monkeys?

Can someone smarter than me help?

I think you're being distracted by the fact that you are a member of one of the species in question. Try thinking about the last common ancestor species of gorillas and chimpanzees. Those two lineages appear to have seperated about seven million years ago, but as far as I know there aren't any good fossils to show what the ancestor species looked like. Or try the split between chimps and bonobos about three million years ago. If those speciations make sense to you (without the confusion of the word "we" or a severely biased taxonomic scheme), then try the split between human beings and the ancestor of chimps and bonobos about six million years ago.

Last night they had a program on a homonid. I can't explain it, but it just didn't 'feel' right to me! A giraffe was still a giraffe (maybe slightly changed, but a giraffe nonetheless) 6 million years ago, but we (humans) have jumped species? I just don't get that? Why?

Animal Planet produced a special called "The Future Is Wild" which was supposedly written with the help of evolutionary scientists, though i'd sure like to know what barrel-botom they scraped these guys off of. It was supposed to show how species would evolve here on Earth over the next few million years, but some of the conclusions were beyond ludicrous. For example, any evolutionaist will tell you sharks have been virtually unchanged for about 300 million years, but on this show they suddenly developed a sophisticated social culture like dolphins, changed the type of prey they hunted and became pack hunters, and evolved a communications system that flashed messages via bioluminescent panels on their skin. They never felt a need to explain what sort of evolutionary pressure would lead to changes that radical.

Yeah, riiiiight.

"Why are humans different that we changed completely, while other animals, every other animal on earth for that matter, remained just that. Can someone smarter than me help?"

Because of alien mating, duh! Prior to alien mating, most hominids had the intelletual capacity of say the average DU'er. After mating with aliens, we became smarter as a race and able to do complex things like change flat tires.

parsy, who has been abducted several times by aliens and forced to be an extra-terrestrial love slave. (Or was that my second marriage?) Oh well, more Doctor Pepper and Parrot Bay Rum.Maybe I'll forget. . .