Question: In your opinion what is the most evolved species/microrganism in the modern world????

Laura Soul answered on 12 Mar 2013:

That is a very tricky question because it really depends on how you define ‘most evolved’, even when they have decided its still something that scientists argue about a lot.

Some researchers did an experiment to find out the most evolved animal (not micro organism or anything else though) and according to their definition of most evolved, it was the Yucca Moth. They found this out by looking at the DNA of thousands of different species and figuring out which animals DNA had changed the most in its evolutionary history.

However you could define it in different ways, if you define it as the species with the fastest rate of evolution it would be something big like a whale or an elephant. But sometimes things can evolve certain features, and then evolve some more and loose those features, this can happen a lot if evolution is happening very fast.

If you defined it as a species that has the most different features to it’s closest relatives (so the one that looks the most different from it’s ancestors so has changed the most and not changed back) then it might be something like a platypus. These are mammals like us (we know because they feed their babies milk and have fur) but they have lots of really weird features, like they lay eggs, have a thing like a beak, have big flipper hands and really strange shaped bones.

Micro-organisms often have really fast rates of evolution, much faster than any animal or plant, so they can evolve loads and loads, but they aren’t very complicated so most scientists don’t think that they are the ‘most evolved’.