THE SCIENCE MOMENT by E.C.McMullen Jr. and Kelly Parks
PLANET OF THE APES SEQUELS, PREQUELS, REMAKES PLANET OF THE APES - 1968 THE SCIENCE MOMENT

SCIENCE MOMENT by KELLY PARKS

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PARALLEL EVOLUTION!1
(Read anything by Stephen Jay Gould, but especially The Burgess Shale). Of all the reasons why they should have known where they were, the most obvious is life.

Every person, every oak tree, every blade of grass should have been a clue.2 And let's not even get into the fact that the apes spoke perfect, 20th century English!3 At the very least they could have made mention of the idea that perhaps after they left Earth some one invented faster than light space travel and colonized this world a thousand years before they got there.

Taylor: "Guys! Think about it! Breathable earthlike atmosphere at an earthlike pressure!
Drinkable earthlike water! An earthlike climate! Do you know what this means?"
Landon & Dodge: "What?"
Taylor: "This could be an EarthLike Planet!"

1Not true.

parallel evolution
biology

Parallel evolution, the evolution of geographically separated groups in such a way that they show morphological resemblances.
- Britannica

SCIENCE MOMENT by E.C. MCMULLEN JR.

2 In taxonomy, until you look at the gene sequence it doesn't matter how much a person, tree, or blade of grass resembles something you are used to seeing. There are as many as 50,000 species of grass, most of them looking so alike that experts in grasses have to look at them in the lab and under a microscope to tell the difference and sometimes not even then. In fact, many examples of one type of lifeform looking remarkably like another type of creature or at the very least, belonging to the same family (banana trees are not real trees, but herbaceous. Palm trees aren't trees but a monocot - a type of grass) exist in nature.

Of the six main classes of animals in the world (a number still hotly debated), there are arachnids that look like insects (over 300 species of ant spider [Myrmarachne plataleoides] alone), insects that look almost exactly like plants (Leaf Insect, Dead Leaf Mantis, Stick Insect), and Reptiles that look like Insects which look like Plants (Satanic Leaf-Tailed Gecko).

Think it's an ant? Count the Legs. Find the Antenna.

There are insects that, while in flight, are nearly identical to birds both in appearance and behavior. What's more, they even fill the same ecological niche. The North American Hummingbird Moth is often confused for an actual Hummingbird.

The cocoon of a Dynastor darius darius caterpillar looks like a snake, and will react to danger like one.

Mimicry is widespread in both the plant and animal kingdom and until we actually meet xenoforms, all assumptions about their genetic / chemical make-up or what they will look or behave like is 100% imagination with zero supporting evidence behind any of it.

As for Parallel Evolution, that would be trees, amphibians, etc., which are considered classic examples of parallel evolution. Not to be confused with Convergent Evolution or Iterative Evolution (which is, in my mind, the most unusual evolution).
Detection of Convergent and Parallel Evolution at the Amino Acid Sequence Level
- Jianzhi Zhang and Sudhir Kumar, Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics and Department of Biology, The Pennsylvania State University

The biological reality of species: gene flow, selection, and collective evolution
- Loren H. Rieseberg & John M. Burke

In fact, no one species of animal life has gone through more examples of Parallel Evolution, while balanced on the edge of Convergent Evolution, than the crab.

Popular Mechanics: Animals Keep Evolving Into Crabs, Which Is Somewhat Disturbing
- Caroline Delbert

Finally, in his book, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, Stephen J. Gould never argued against Parallel Evolution, he only laid out the pros and cons of it. In fact, he leaned so heavily toward Parallel Evolution (his Tape of Life conjecture) that scientists who favor Convergent Evolution often cite Gould's book as their point of conflict.

Britannica: Convergent and parallel evolution

2 But yeah, English speaking apes are a dead give-away. Why would anyone believe that? Why would the end be such a big surprise?

This is why.

Art of Stage Logic -
Or when talking of plays,
Theater Logic

By 1968, audiences got used to a few common, unrealistic gaffs that Hollywood could not stop making. Foolishness like Sound In Space, Dodging Bullets, Dodging beams of light, Outrunning Explosions, ancient Greeks and Romans who spoke with non-rhotic British accents, ancient pre-17th century Brits speaking with non-rhotic British accents, and aliens that spoke English.

This isn't just Hollywood. Even in William Shakespeare's era, his Romans in Rome spoke English, as did his Greeks to Greeks, Moors to Moors, and so on. Further, it was the same in ancient Greek plays that characters from other nations spoke Greek.

Examples of this still exist from 1940s and 50s Spy and SciFi movies to episodes of Rod Serling's original TWILIGHT ZONE to episodes of the original STAR TREK.

So when the apes first appear and speak English, audiences weren't being stupid, it was the long recognized Art of Stage Logic that everyone speaks your language. Audiences - as trained by theater for centuries - just charitably thought, 'Artistic license', so they could be entertained by the rest of the movie.

This review copyright 1999 E.C.McMullen Jr.
Updated 2009, 2021, 2024

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