Question: Will humans ever evolve into something different or change?

Hayley Evers-King answered on 12 Mar 2013:

This is a really interesting question! I don’t think humans will change as rapidly as they have in history, but we probably will change. The reason I don’t think we will change rapidly is that there are relatively few pressures on us now that can cause us to die before we reproduce and pass on our genes. This is thanks to the advances in medical science etc. This stops the natural selection that’s usually associated with the ‘survival of the fittest’ idea – we don’t have to outrun animals anymore, so slow people’s genes(which might make their children fast) get passed on as much as fast peoples for example.

But I think there might be changes resulting from social and cultural choices we make – based on who we choose have children with. For example, if most people in the world decide they’d rather have children with really tall people, maybe we will have more really tall people on average!