The "Why are there still monkeys?" Question

This post first appeared as a guest post on the WWJTD blog, here 

If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?

It's a question we've all seen before. Sometimes it's asked genuinely. Really. 

If it is genuine, and it's often hard to tell, it should be answered genuinely. In and of itself, it's not a stupid question. It's a question that someone who accepts evolution needs to be able to answer. 

I answered it once by engaging the person who asked, sending him some links to some introductory evolution articles, and suggested he have a read.  

He tweeted back to me three days later, thanking me for the information and saying that he now accepted evolution because he now understood it. He still follows me on twitter to this day. He said it was hard, because he'd been raised as a creationist, but he wanted to learn. I call that a win for education. 

But it's not always like that. 

Often the 'why are there still monkeys' question is a slur. It's a 'gotcha' used to bring the theory of evolution to its knees. 

What I love about this is that people *actually* think this defeats evolution. I can't work out which of two things they're trying to highlight. 

Are they suggesting...
1: That biologists haven't noticed monkeys are still around?
2: Biologists *have* noticed that monkeys are still around, but are hoping no one else has? 

Imagine it, 150+ years worth of scientific study, thousands of people studying evolution right now, millions of papers written, millions of fossils analysed, and all this gets undone by some internet nong asking why there are still monkeys? Someone somewhere thinks this will happen. 

In case you need to know why there are still monkeys, this video is the best explanation I've seen: 

If you see the question - don't automatically call the person a fool or make fun of them. Ask them if they'd really like to know why there are still monkeys. If they would, explain it to them. You might be surprised by the result. 

Other Evolution posts:

Open letter to argumentative evolution deniers: http://mrozatheist.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/an-open-letter-to-argumentative.html

Scientific World in Shock! Evolution Proved False! http://mrozatheist.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/scientific-world-in-shock-evolution.html