Maybe you should listen to your biology teacher more closely.Jaz wrote: We're actually descended from a rat-type creature. So are apes. We're not descended from apes. We're just descended from the same creature. (Apparently all/most mammals are descended from the rat-type creature)
The first mammals were kind of similar to small rodents. But from there they diversified. So mammals have the common ancestor "small rodent". But humans and modern apes had the common ancestor "ape".
Imagine it like a timeline:
small rodent_______________>apes______>humans and modern apes