Ruby's influences are sometimes described as being both Perl and smalltalk, but I'd say Ruby's OO comes more from Smalltalk than Perl OO.

Things that came more from Perl to ruby include: Ruby's syntax; first-class regex support; some rarely used features like the Perl-ish global variables and command-line options; just the idea of being an interpreted unix-friendly language executed like `ruby file.rb`.

I do think Python and ruby are very similar languages, in the whole universe of languages. I think that's not really because either influenced each other, but instead because both were invented at approximately the same time, to meet similar needs -- both as interpreted-not-compiled, edit-with-a-text-editor, with C-like syntax, etc.

Them both being so similar, I wonder what's behind things like "ruby just didn't click for me but then I loved Python" -- but then, I'm the same just opposite. I don't know if I'd say it didn't "click", but I much prefer ruby to python, hugely (and sadly at this point, I feel like a betamax enthusiast), despite knowing that they are basically similar languages.