"Dohpaz"  wrote in message
>
> How does a sexually reproductive species split in two?
>
One mechanism is "allopatric speciation", which is a fancy way of saying
that two populations become divided by a physical barrier, maybe a stretch
of water or a desert, and then evolve differently.

> Who would a mutant mate with? At some point, a nearly-human ape
> must have given birth to a nearly-ape human. This child would be the
> only one of its speices, so how could that species survive?
>
Ignoring the special case of humans (Chomsky, a famous linguist, believes
that language must have arisen "at a stroke", religious people believe in a
soul which distinguishes man from beast, consciousness and free will may be
restricted to humans, and may be all or nothing phenomena), there is no one
point at which a species becomes another.

For instance, big dogs and small dogs cannot mate with each other. If we
were to eliminate all dogs except for St Bernards and miniature Yorkshire
terriers, we would have effectively two species. However as it is there is a
slow graduation of dogs from the biggest to the smallest, all sexually
compatible with the ones nearest in the chain.
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