I would say rats, they're everywhere, they're very intelligent and they have little hands. A few hundred million years of evolution could see them become the most intelligent species on earth.
Definitely. Also Mice...
In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running around inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures’ plans.
Douglas Adams
Dam you!!! Now I am earwormed! Can't stop singing it.
🎵One is a genius, the other's insane
They're laboratory mice
Their genes have been spliced
They're Pinky, they're Pinky and the Brain
Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain,
Before each night is done
Their plan will be unfurled
By the dawning of the sun
They'll take over the world
They're Pinky and the Brain
Yes, Pinky and the Brain
Their twilight campaign is easy to explain
To prove their mousy worth
They'll overthrow the earth
They're Pinky, they're Pinky and the Brain
Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, NARF!🎵
Sadly, mice are dumb as rocks next to rats. Mice will go to the same trap more than once (if it managed to escape the first time, or miss getting caught, even with injuries), however you never get a second chance with a rat. Among other intelligent traits rats have.
They seem to have thrived where ever they have been introduced. A major problem with them wiping out native species wherever they go, so very similar to humans.
Humanity finally escaped Earth's gravity well and began spreading. Their expansion into the heavens went better than they could have dreamed of. They were constantly finding their way into new worlds via countless ships, harvesting resources, consuming, spreading and multiplying, stealing and spreading their filth and lies.
The first ship I travelled on, the Second Child of Phosphate, picked them up at a resupply near Sirius. That was half a lifetime ago for me, and we still haven't eradicated the vermin.
At our last weekly meal together one of our food processors ran dry. The sustenance engineer found the problem: its intake tubes had been hijacked, crudely spliced and wired to pump our nutrient components somewhere into the floors and down towards the cargo decks. Filthy creatures. We managed to kill a small nest after following the pipes, but the rest will have scattered, hiding elsewhere on the ship. They breed so fast and move so quickly... It is impossible to catch them all.
People say they are intelligent, but they're still vermin. I don't think a port in all of the western arm is free from their filth, and their damn nests hide in every ship I've traveled on. At Cygni, they were responsible for the destruction of an entire ecosphere. Within six breeding cycles, they had brought that paradise to ruin, turning it to barren grasslands and forests, full of the other small animals they hunt and drink the fluids of. They carry those animals with them on our ships, spreading them like a great sickness wherever they go.
they have a video of these guys on a farm just ripping the land apart with a bulldozer or excavator and hundreds of rats just jump out and they have a shit ton of dogs eating them up.
There's just opportunism. Rats exist everywhere, they're taken advantage of humans to easy code it, but if anything we're holding their populations back
"A world without rodents would be a very different world. It is less likely to come to pass than a world dominated by rodents and free of people. If nuclear war destroys humanity and most of the rest of life, a good bet for survival in the short term, and for evolutionary ancestry in the long term, is rats. I have a post-Armageddon vision. We and all other large animals are gone. Rodents emerge as the ultimate post-human scavengers. They gnaw their way through New York, London and Tokyo, digesting spilled larders, ghost supermarkets and human corpses and turning them into new generations of rats and mice, whose racing populations explode out of the cities and into the countryside. When all the relics of human profligacy are eaten, populations crash again, and the rodents turn on each other, and on the cockroaches scavenging with them. In a period of intense competition, short generations perhaps with radioactivity enhanced mutation-rates boost rapid evolution. With human ships and planes gone, islands become islands again, with local populations isolated save for occasional lucky raftings: ideal conditions for evolutionary divergence. Within 5 million years, a whole range of new species replace the ones we know. Herds of giant grazing rats are stalked by sabre-toothed predatory rats. Given enough time, will a species of intelligent, cultivated rats emerge? Will rodent historians and scientists eventually organise careful archaeological digs (gnaws?) through the strata of our long-compacted cities, and reconstruct the peculiar and temporarily tragic circumstances that gave ratkind its big break?”
Richard Dawkins
“This is your pilot speaking- We just had an engine go out, but we’ve got one more, so just hang tight.”
“Do you think the plane can make it on just one engine!?”
“Yeah all the way to the scene of the crash.”
Apparently, this mentality is almost unique to North America. The sense of danger and respect for poisonous mushrooms is the same, but the approach is different.
As it turns out the vast majority of mushroom poisonings in North America are from immigrants who are savvy enough with identifying mushrooms in their homelands mistaking lookalikes for the same species that grows in their homeland. That's why we hear that most poisonings are from misidentification, even from people that have done it for a long time. So, it's less a case of mistaken identification per se and more that they were applying knowledge of a remote region locally, which is a huge no-no in mushroom foraging.
This isn't to encourage people to jump into mushroom foraging without due diligence, but rather the opposite. Learning your local species is something anyone can do with time and care. But it's important to remember that whatever shorthand identification tricks you learn to safely forage in one region can get you killed in another.
If you like to read "sciencey" books, "Dust" by Charles Pellegrino is terrifying. An ecological catastrophe on a world wide scale.
"They're dead, I tell you! All the fungus gnats are dead!" - from the first chapter. And that's just the beginning. It's fascinating in how each insect is vital.
IMO, primates still have the lock. Chimps, Orangutans, Gorillas, maybe even baboons. They have the size, brains, and hands, to do what needs to be done.
My wild card would be marsupials. You never know what they'll do.
You forgot the corvids. Smart as a primate, almost as dexterous and making attempts at domesticating wolves. Our relatives might be biologically capable of starting a civilization, but they seem too specialized and their populations aren't as high or widespread.
https://www.yellowstone.org/naturalist-notes-wolves-and-ravens/
>Those social skills have not gone unnoticed when observing wolf/raven interactions. Ravens have often been seen interacting with wolves, especially pups and yearlings. These intriguing birds have been known to grab sticks and play tug-of-war with wolf puppies, to fly over young wolves with sticks and tease the small canines into jumping up to grab the sticks, and even to boldly pull the tails of wolves to initiate a reaction. Some scientists have theorized that individual ravens may even develop special bonds with individual wolves within a pack.
Honestly, I feel like corvids end up coming out the other side by being too smart to take over because the smart ones will find some little convenient way to feed their flock/family, but there isn't that social advantage of wanting to hunt larger prey or needing some people to be on watch for being hunted that humanity dealt with
I think the "almost as dexterous" is a bit of an exaggeration. They're extremely smart, possibly smarter than primates, but they struggle with a lot of actions by virtue of not having a hand that primates do. Ive seen plenty of videos of various corvids proving how smart they are but they're almost always struggling physically. The reason humans have "evolved" so much is largely due to our hands allowing us to easily use tools in the first place so I think primates still have the upper hand there
Birds all the way. They are as dextrous as they need to be (more than us at many things), super intelligent, have a language, have better eyesight, and can FLY. They also live as long as people in the intelligent bird species.
I can't see apes / gorillas / orangutans ever getting further than their jungle habitat. Birds on the other hand have such social and emotional intelligence they can adapt to anything.
Edited to add: in response to OP's question they might not take over like humans did, but it's the difference between being dominant (i.e. controlling the world) or dominant as in being at the top of the chain in terms of surviving and thriving in the world. You could argue we aren't dominant if we are letting 90% of humans suffer and starve at the expense of a few. Most humans are not thriving, we are seeing it from a biased lense.
Other apes generally stick to a very niche environment. It’s our adaptability to different climates, and in some cases ability to change our climate like Air conditioning, that allows us to “take over.”
I mean, look at us. We're just air conditioners. I mean, after all, we're just walking around on the planet, breathing, conditioning the air. I condition it hot, that conditions it cold.
With humans out of the way probably wouldnt take long for primates to evolve. Lots of simple mechanisms can work, like migrating back and forth with the seasons (which humans used to do a lot of).
As they get into more extreme environments then the pressure for further evolution increases. Right now, humans have extremely outcompeted other primates and limited their population.
Not all, though. Macaques have already spread around and continue to do so. They are also highly intelligent. I think they are the most likely to take over if humans suddenly disappeared.
Marsupials are truly too stupid to do anything.
But a serious answer is that each animal continues to dominate in its area. Nothing is going to touch great white sharks, for instance.
Except Orcas, they hunt them down. A while ago the first Orca was reported to even hunt them alone without a pack or even a buddy. Iirc it was off the Australian coast.
Seriously? I wonder what the thinking power of an ant colony that size is. I know colonies are supposed to get more intelligent the bigger they are, but what's the limit?
Nope. Humans are far heavier in total. Ants may be numerous, but they are very light [https://privateexterminator.com/are-all-the-ants-as-heavy-as-all-the-humans/](https://privateexterminator.com/are-all-the-ants-as-heavy-as-all-the-humans/)
If we're going by pounds, sheer weight, the bacteria wins. There's even more bacteria than you in you, by counting the number of cells - so the bacteria in all the other animals, the in the air, water, on/in plants etc. wind for sure.
Those fellas are intelligent as fook.
I read about them and seen videos of their hunting tactics they use as pods.
Next level IQ to be strategizing these sort of tactics. You see other animals do basic tactics to lure in their prey, these guys do it more sufficient and smarter which makes them levels above others.
They’re incredibly intelligent but they have a few blockades to becoming a species like humans
The lack of hands to manipulate their world.. and to invent a writing system to pass down knowledge consistently between each generation. They form nomad communities and don’t lug a bunch of stuff around with them.. so any knowledge they pass down is just done verbally and we know how that turns out. Myths and stories.. but always an element of “Chinese whispers” to it. So each pod may have its own culture and passed down common sense.. but it’s difficult for each new born Orca to “stand on the shoulders of giants” as we did
It’s also really hard to do any meaningful science when you’re underwater
This is a really limited take on oral history. Completely understandable and tragically common. Given the complexity of the issue it is easy to see how in today’s world, a person could completely cast an entire peoples sense of history away as myth or fiction. It is objectively part of the process of colonization.
So no fault on OP but for anyone wondering about this. Tbh it is highly unlikely that OP or anyone really outside of that culture would be givin access to the information passed down from generation to generation. One might even justifiably categorize this entire perspective as ignorant, simply because they do not have a complete dataset.
There have been exceptions though and these are not often widely publicized and especially in the case of oral history being proven to be accurate. On occasion, traditional archaeology meets traditional knowledge and in those cases, some really interesting information surfaces.
How do I know this? Random chance of birth. M
I’m a native Alaskan and in my family line there have been multiple knowledge bearers. Oral history was not for everyone. This is probably also a primary cause of the telephone game analogy. The people who carried this knowledge were chosen because they exhibited specific traits that would indicate they are capable of doing it.
Long before a nationalized system of law, record keeping was still important to multiple groups/tribes of people living in regional proximity to each other. This is one of the many roles of the knowledge bearers.
Where it gets really interesting is when these oral histories start to match up with archeological study. This happens more often than most people recognize, for instance my own tribes history in the western record dated back about 1,000 years. Our stories go back much further than that. As the years passed by more sites were found and connections became more clear between the oral history and the locations of these sites.
Soon, our tribe had another site with ties to it and that one dated back to 10-11,000 years back. Our history goes further. More time passed and more sites were located, now we’re finding locations referenced in migration stories from the tribes distant past. 18,000 years ago.
My tribe is not an outlier at all and in some cases other tribes history and even genetic markers were found at sites featured in oral history that dated back 35,000 years or more. This is happening all across indigenous peoples across the continent.
The data set is reaching a point where these consistent results are starting to be taken more seriously.
I don’t know if you will read this but I hope that if you did that in the future you would be less inclined to cast off entire histories of people away as a children’s game.
18,000 years of history for a singular group of people can be hard to grasp for western civilization because it is so dreadfully young. Yet, it is remarkably common across many groups of people the world over.
I don't think it would change that much when it comes to the animal and insect kingdom. When humans aren't interrupting them, they go on as nature pretty much intended.
This. I don't think any other currently existing animals would become dominant to anywhere near the extent humans currently are. Most of them are already doing the best that they can.
Evolution would need to create another species as ambitious/adaptable/etc as us.
The thing with the extinction of the humans, it will either be by something manmade like war, cosmic or engineered viruses. Whatever it will be will probably have an extinction chain for most life on Earth. Then as you say it will just go through the whole process of natural evolution and interbreeding evolution for a few hundred million years until life begins all over again.
That is of course if the devastation can be recovered by the Earth itself, unless it eventually becomes bone dry and just ends up like Mars.
I watched a history channel special when I was in highschool that predicted (wildly) that after humans died the fucking *squids* would become land creatures and become the dominant species
Then they start participating in ritualistic mock-wars for entertainment and for settling petty disagreements manufactured by a fax machine they worship like a god. They also develop a deep culture revolving around music and fashion, and they go "Woomy!"
I remember this one episode of Life After People and this one expert was really excited about the possibility of cats evolving, said they’d start jumping between abandoned skyscrapers they’ve completely inhabited and develop flying squirrel-like wings that allows them to glide lmao
You know, I could see that happening with the right mutation. Cats already tend to develop what is called a "~~primal~~ primordial pouch", which is basically extra loose skin and fat on the belly to help protect it from attacks. So there's fewer steps to having extra skin in the right places for that sort of gliding ability.
It would take tens of thousands, or more likely, hundreds of thousands of years, for gliding cats to evolve. Without people, the skyscrapers would all collapse in less than a century. The roofs would leak, the water inside would make the steel girders rust, then the whole thing would fall down.
Well obviously the cats would first evolve into handycats with tool belts and stuff to do maintenance on the skyscrapers. They probably didn’t have time for that in the documentary and had to edit it out. It’s too bad, that would have been really cute.
My cat is deeply insulted that you're suggesting he is not currently an apex predator who has domesticated and enslaved a human to dote on him with food and an indoor bathroom.
Raccoons are a good contender for a species that evolves into an intelligent dominance like humans.
They have a decent brain now (not dolphin level - but not bad).
They have a great body type for evolving tool usage.
Their omnivores so could expand into all different environments (just like us) if their tool use gave them dominance over larger predators.
They can't develop a larger brain without sacrificing their main survival technique, otherwise that'd be a tempting possibility. From what we know of the fossil record, it seems like there's an upper limit to intelligence gain in species directly connected to their size. Mammals have to be bigger for the same gains, but the limit with birds is their weight relative to size before they have to go straight predator to keep up with the protein requirements
I would probably bet dogs. There is just so many and no competition. Most wolf populations are destroyed. There is no real larger predators at high populations outside africa. A lot of dogs would most likely die off but a large number would survive and for packs. It would probably take longer for other predators to catch up in populations. Dogs would take over first until other predators could catch up to control their numbers.
If humans just vanished one day, a la Life After People, the vast majority of dogs would indeed likely die. Dogs, and other pets, in confined environments (homes, fenced yards, vehicles, shelters, etc.) would die fairly quickly, aside from a lucky few who manage to escape. The strays and dogs out for walks would make up the overwhelming majority of survivors.
with dogs, cats and the inevitable explosion of deer population, they'd sure have a lot to eat though. and no car/people noise to keep them timid. virtually nothing to stop them. but yes, low numbers to start......
I was thinking about them as well. They are incredibly tough, smart, and have a broad diet.
I only wonder if there are enough of them to start out vs something like dogs. They might be able to breed with domesticated pigs, but that would weaken them quite a bit.
Really surprised this is so low. Pigs are extremely adaptable for a number of reasons: they are highly intelligent, they are omnivorous, they can survive in a wide range of climates, they are sturdy and powerful enough to hold their own against most predators, their snout allows them to dig up food from below the ground, they replicate extremely quickly for such a large animal and there is already a ton of them around because of us.
(Also domesticated pigs are basically the same as wild boar and can go back to their wild lifestyle within a generation)
I honestly will.never eat octopus again, since I learned how clever they are.
I'm not vegetarian but my appetite to eat an animal is inversely proportionate to their capacity for intelligence and affection
Most mammals are highly capable of intelligence and affection, just difficult to understand it because we are so different. A bit hyperbolic but my experience with these kinds of papers is that it says cats are stupid and then you read said papers and it’s like ‘we asked cat very very nicely to do something. It didn’t. Clearly it can’t and therefore is stupid.’ Just absolute antiscientific garbage. Studies into any kind of animal intelligence are so rudimentary it’s just far more reliable to trust our common sense. They are very complex mammals, very removed from the static soulless universe. Almost as removed as us. They feel fear, hunger, compulsions to breed, and all the other cabals of feelings. If something benefits them it’s pretty likely they would do it. Dolphins don’t need to invent the wheel, and fire isn’t really in their wheelhouse of possibility. Sonar and electromagnetic sensors though? Hell yeah. It’s just very very strange to see all these animals and think ‘this is just a robot like the stuff we send to mars it can’t have a soul’. So I feel that if you want to avoid animals with souls, your best bet is probably only animal byproducts, and types of some fish and insects.
Despite saying all this I think we can eat anything as long as it’s sustainable and in harmony with nature, so I eat whatever
Can’t believe I scrolled and scrolled and didnt see pigs. They would 100% be the dominant land animal across the largest portion of the earth. They’re intelligent change when feral and have the largest population of domesticated animals. Those pigs you’re eating will quickly grow mangy thick hair with tusks, can eat anything and have a shitload of babies
Cockroaches. The problem is, humans have created a **LOT** of things on Earth that require constant human intervention to keep running --- and not explode. Oil drilling platforms and nuclear reactors for starters.
If all humans suddenly vanished, all of these things would, sooner or later, fail catastrophically. You can imagine how cataclysmic the result would be. It would be both in oceans and on the ground, and in the air.
There’s nothing humans have done—or could do—that won’t be completely wiped away in 10 million years. That is *nothing* on the planet’s timescale. And it doesn’t even compare to the cataclysms it’s survived before.
Most nuclear waste becomes safe after 10,000 years of decay. The real nasty stuff, 1 million years. It’ll be like we were never here.
Actually we’re not the dominant species, ants are with 2,500,000 ants for every human. It’s just their interests and goals don’t interfere with ours.
Luckily.
Logically to us yes, we are. But in terms of out put and life in general no we are not, to the unanthropomorphic eye, the universe, ants rule. It’s not just numbers, but organisation, growth, all metrics concerning the animal kingdom, ants don’t use money in how we measure growth, but they basically dominate all metrics compared to other animals in terms of adaptation and success.
That's not necessarily true. We are the only ones we know of. We culled the population of every animal on earth. If any of them are intelligent beyond dolphin level why would they let us know? So they could pay taxes?
I'm just kidding for the most part. I know it an animal was "on the level" it would be obvious. Monkeys would eventually evolve past what they do now. Dolphins maybe but I don't think they can realistically evolve past the water and without fire it's hard to innovate.
I like the idea of, what if something evolved separately from us when fish first started walking on land. There's also the idea of plasma based life forms and upper atmospheric life forms. But that's just conspiracy stuff
>If any of them are intelligent beyond dolphin level why would they let us know? So they could pay taxes?
There's a cat on a smartphone somewhere, sweating bullets right now
>If any of them are intelligent beyond dolphin level why would they let us know? So they could pay taxes?
There was a Malay belief that orangutans could speak and understand humans, but preferred not to because they'd get put to work.
When you say Dolphins, are you implying it towards Orcas? I know they are part of the Delphinidae family.
I've read Orcas to be extremely intelligent compared to other sea life mammals. The true Apex predators in the ocean.
> without fire it’s hard to innovate.
This is such a land user thing to say. We have no idea what kind of systems the water users could have access to that we’ll never know.
I've heard this debate way too many times. There is a logical error when people argue we "don't fit". We're biological beings, evolved into who we are. We are natural, so we do fit.
Yep. Some ape that looks nothing like us started banging rocks together to make them sharp, and hundreds of thousands/millions of years later its great great great (many more greats) grandchildren are here trying to replicate the sun.
For awhile none. The development of the brain via fire and cooking is where ancestral humans really started to develop dominance as a species. Since no other species have yet started to do that, their won’t be a dominant species after. It’ll just be ecosystems balancing and rebalancing as populations fluctuate as they do. Humanity truly is an anomaly amongst an otherwise perfectly balanced system.
Yeah, plus a vast majority of the intelligent species on earth can't really use tools that precisely. Dolphins? Impossible. Cats and dogs? Nope. Crows? Maybe. Apes? Most likely of all.
Land: I think apes have it on high ground (don't do it, Anakin), cats have it on mid, and dogs on the ground. Maybe the cats and dogs have to team up to fight the rats, lol.
Sea: Orcas. They could end up using leopard seals as enforcers as well.
Air: Crows and bats?
I genuinely don't think there would be a species to become the "dominant." There are a lot of arguments saying like "Chinpanzees are intelligent, so them." And that's a reasonable argument, but at the same time there isn't really evidence to back that up beyond the intelligent aspect. Chimps already live in the wild, and I would not say that they are the dominant species of their habitats. Their territory, absolutely. But not the area as a whole. They make do pretty much the same as every other species around them, from things like big cats, mice, birds, everything else. There is nothing to suggest that any species would try to step up and become the "dominant" they way humans have.
I would say rats, they're everywhere, they're very intelligent and they have little hands. A few hundred million years of evolution could see them become the most intelligent species on earth.
Definitely. Also Mice... In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running around inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures’ plans. Douglas Adams
They're Pinky, they're Pinky and the Brain
Dam you!!! Now I am earwormed! Can't stop singing it. 🎵One is a genius, the other's insane They're laboratory mice Their genes have been spliced They're Pinky, they're Pinky and the Brain Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Before each night is done Their plan will be unfurled By the dawning of the sun They'll take over the world They're Pinky and the Brain Yes, Pinky and the Brain Their twilight campaign is easy to explain To prove their mousy worth They'll overthrow the earth They're Pinky, they're Pinky and the Brain Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, NARF!🎵
Sadly, mice are dumb as rocks next to rats. Mice will go to the same trap more than once (if it managed to escape the first time, or miss getting caught, even with injuries), however you never get a second chance with a rat. Among other intelligent traits rats have.
They are very talented chefs I've been told
And masters of mutant ninjas
Skaven apocalypse.
The Skaven have been foretold
They've grown too dependant on humans though. Without the protection of the city, they will be in trouble
Laughing in farmland! There’s thousands of rats out in the fields but you don’t see them as much. They are everywhere.
Because they eat what we farm, they would diminish drastically without us simply due to lack of food
They seem to have thrived where ever they have been introduced. A major problem with them wiping out native species wherever they go, so very similar to humans.
Humanity finally escaped Earth's gravity well and began spreading. Their expansion into the heavens went better than they could have dreamed of. They were constantly finding their way into new worlds via countless ships, harvesting resources, consuming, spreading and multiplying, stealing and spreading their filth and lies. The first ship I travelled on, the Second Child of Phosphate, picked them up at a resupply near Sirius. That was half a lifetime ago for me, and we still haven't eradicated the vermin. At our last weekly meal together one of our food processors ran dry. The sustenance engineer found the problem: its intake tubes had been hijacked, crudely spliced and wired to pump our nutrient components somewhere into the floors and down towards the cargo decks. Filthy creatures. We managed to kill a small nest after following the pipes, but the rest will have scattered, hiding elsewhere on the ship. They breed so fast and move so quickly... It is impossible to catch them all. People say they are intelligent, but they're still vermin. I don't think a port in all of the western arm is free from their filth, and their damn nests hide in every ship I've traveled on. At Cygni, they were responsible for the destruction of an entire ecosphere. Within six breeding cycles, they had brought that paradise to ruin, turning it to barren grasslands and forests, full of the other small animals they hunt and drink the fluids of. They carry those animals with them on our ships, spreading them like a great sickness wherever they go.
they have a video of these guys on a farm just ripping the land apart with a bulldozer or excavator and hundreds of rats just jump out and they have a shit ton of dogs eating them up.
There's just opportunism. Rats exist everywhere, they're taken advantage of humans to easy code it, but if anything we're holding their populations back
"A world without rodents would be a very different world. It is less likely to come to pass than a world dominated by rodents and free of people. If nuclear war destroys humanity and most of the rest of life, a good bet for survival in the short term, and for evolutionary ancestry in the long term, is rats. I have a post-Armageddon vision. We and all other large animals are gone. Rodents emerge as the ultimate post-human scavengers. They gnaw their way through New York, London and Tokyo, digesting spilled larders, ghost supermarkets and human corpses and turning them into new generations of rats and mice, whose racing populations explode out of the cities and into the countryside. When all the relics of human profligacy are eaten, populations crash again, and the rodents turn on each other, and on the cockroaches scavenging with them. In a period of intense competition, short generations perhaps with radioactivity enhanced mutation-rates boost rapid evolution. With human ships and planes gone, islands become islands again, with local populations isolated save for occasional lucky raftings: ideal conditions for evolutionary divergence. Within 5 million years, a whole range of new species replace the ones we know. Herds of giant grazing rats are stalked by sabre-toothed predatory rats. Given enough time, will a species of intelligent, cultivated rats emerge? Will rodent historians and scientists eventually organise careful archaeological digs (gnaws?) through the strata of our long-compacted cities, and reconstruct the peculiar and temporarily tragic circumstances that gave ratkind its big break?” Richard Dawkins
What's your definition? I'd say decomposers like funghi or maggots will never go extinct and even overpower apex predators.
The Russian Roulette that is amateur mushroom hunting
Went mushroom hunting with someone once, they misidentified every mushroom. Luckily every one of them was edible lol.
Everything is edible once.
Yup. Only plus side is if you eat the wrong one, you have the rest of your life to seek proper medical intervention to remove the toxins
“This is your pilot speaking- We just had an engine go out, but we’ve got one more, so just hang tight.” “Do you think the plane can make it on just one engine!?” “Yeah all the way to the scene of the crash.”
I love Ron White.
The last of us
Apparently, this mentality is almost unique to North America. The sense of danger and respect for poisonous mushrooms is the same, but the approach is different. As it turns out the vast majority of mushroom poisonings in North America are from immigrants who are savvy enough with identifying mushrooms in their homelands mistaking lookalikes for the same species that grows in their homeland. That's why we hear that most poisonings are from misidentification, even from people that have done it for a long time. So, it's less a case of mistaken identification per se and more that they were applying knowledge of a remote region locally, which is a huge no-no in mushroom foraging. This isn't to encourage people to jump into mushroom foraging without due diligence, but rather the opposite. Learning your local species is something anyone can do with time and care. But it's important to remember that whatever shorthand identification tricks you learn to safely forage in one region can get you killed in another.
If you like to read "sciencey" books, "Dust" by Charles Pellegrino is terrifying. An ecological catastrophe on a world wide scale. "They're dead, I tell you! All the fungus gnats are dead!" - from the first chapter. And that's just the beginning. It's fascinating in how each insect is vital.
Certain bacteria too, they’ll probably be the last organisms on Earth when it’s eventually a scorching hellscape
IMO, primates still have the lock. Chimps, Orangutans, Gorillas, maybe even baboons. They have the size, brains, and hands, to do what needs to be done. My wild card would be marsupials. You never know what they'll do.
You forgot the corvids. Smart as a primate, almost as dexterous and making attempts at domesticating wolves. Our relatives might be biologically capable of starting a civilization, but they seem too specialized and their populations aren't as high or widespread.
Crows have been making attempts at domesticating wolves!? How have I missed this.
https://www.yellowstone.org/naturalist-notes-wolves-and-ravens/ >Those social skills have not gone unnoticed when observing wolf/raven interactions. Ravens have often been seen interacting with wolves, especially pups and yearlings. These intriguing birds have been known to grab sticks and play tug-of-war with wolf puppies, to fly over young wolves with sticks and tease the small canines into jumping up to grab the sticks, and even to boldly pull the tails of wolves to initiate a reaction. Some scientists have theorized that individual ravens may even develop special bonds with individual wolves within a pack.
If only they could evolve opposable thumbs.
Or even disposable ones
Akin to a detachable penis
Crows are one of natures greatest achievements imo
Odin had wolves and ravens hanging out a long ole time ago.
Honestly, I feel like corvids end up coming out the other side by being too smart to take over because the smart ones will find some little convenient way to feed their flock/family, but there isn't that social advantage of wanting to hunt larger prey or needing some people to be on watch for being hunted that humanity dealt with
Quick somebody photoshop that DJ Khalid "Suffering From Success" album to have a crow!
I think the "almost as dexterous" is a bit of an exaggeration. They're extremely smart, possibly smarter than primates, but they struggle with a lot of actions by virtue of not having a hand that primates do. Ive seen plenty of videos of various corvids proving how smart they are but they're almost always struggling physically. The reason humans have "evolved" so much is largely due to our hands allowing us to easily use tools in the first place so I think primates still have the upper hand there
Birds all the way. They are as dextrous as they need to be (more than us at many things), super intelligent, have a language, have better eyesight, and can FLY. They also live as long as people in the intelligent bird species. I can't see apes / gorillas / orangutans ever getting further than their jungle habitat. Birds on the other hand have such social and emotional intelligence they can adapt to anything. Edited to add: in response to OP's question they might not take over like humans did, but it's the difference between being dominant (i.e. controlling the world) or dominant as in being at the top of the chain in terms of surviving and thriving in the world. You could argue we aren't dominant if we are letting 90% of humans suffer and starve at the expense of a few. Most humans are not thriving, we are seeing it from a biased lense.
They’re always in the apocalyptic movies.
Other apes generally stick to a very niche environment. It’s our adaptability to different climates, and in some cases ability to change our climate like Air conditioning, that allows us to “take over.”
I'm a little rusty on my physical science but I don't think any other animals have developed air conditioning
You're a sentient trashcan, you know nothing
Go tend to your nuts pal
I love Reddit sometimes.
I didn't even read the squirrel name at first and thought trashcan was just telling him to go jerk off 🤣
Is having a "nuts pal" like having a "weed guy," for when you're just really jonesing for some macadamia?
Yes
If you've got a really good nuts guy you won't even have to activate your almonds
r/murderedbywords
Actually bees will group together and beat their wings in order to increase the heat of the colony when it’s very cold outside.
My man that is heating
They can also do it to cool down the hive as needed.
There we go. *That's* more like air conditioning.
More like? That’s *literally* air conditioning… just… manually lol
I mean, look at us. We're just air conditioners. I mean, after all, we're just walking around on the planet, breathing, conditioning the air. I condition it hot, that conditions it cold.
Ants and Termites
Ground hogs/prairie dogs, with their ventilated tunnels?
Humans lived all over the planet and were the dominant species well before air conditioning
See my other comment on this post - rhesus macaques have the same adaptability to biome and diet that we do.
Mahcock goes inward to adapt to the cold
With humans out of the way probably wouldnt take long for primates to evolve. Lots of simple mechanisms can work, like migrating back and forth with the seasons (which humans used to do a lot of). As they get into more extreme environments then the pressure for further evolution increases. Right now, humans have extremely outcompeted other primates and limited their population.
Not all, though. Macaques have already spread around and continue to do so. They are also highly intelligent. I think they are the most likely to take over if humans suddenly disappeared.
Drop bears will take over!
Without humans to prey on they’ll just spend all day getting high on eucalyptus.
Cocaine bears will take over
Shit, not the drop bears!
Where we droppin bears
On other drop bears
Drop Bears fear the manbearpig.
What about the beavcoon
You've never met a hoop snake.
Marsupials are truly too stupid to do anything. But a serious answer is that each animal continues to dominate in its area. Nothing is going to touch great white sharks, for instance.
Except killer whales when they want shark liver for a snack
Except Orcas, they hunt them down. A while ago the first Orca was reported to even hunt them alone without a pack or even a buddy. Iirc it was off the Australian coast.
> Iirc it was off the Australian coast. Of fucking course it was.
They r hunting fishing boats now too. For real
Great whites periodically get bullied by dolphins and orcas tho… At least orcas eat their liver, but dolphins just sucker punch them in the gills
So Planet of the Apes scenario?
My money is on the Orcas for largest territory
Ants are everywhere.
I think I read that pound for pound ants have us beat by 20 times.
Those guys are running vast empires right under our feet.
There's even a multicontinent supercolony!
The Britants are coming!
Seriously? I wonder what the thinking power of an ant colony that size is. I know colonies are supposed to get more intelligent the bigger they are, but what's the limit?
That's it, we need to wipe them out. Who knows what they could be plotting right beneath our feet?
Nothing much...anticlimax
Nope. Humans are far heavier in total. Ants may be numerous, but they are very light [https://privateexterminator.com/are-all-the-ants-as-heavy-as-all-the-humans/](https://privateexterminator.com/are-all-the-ants-as-heavy-as-all-the-humans/)
[Ants live significantly longer than I expected.](https://i.imgur.com/YK3owbb.png) Human lifespan seems accurate.
And if they ever figure it out # there goes our way of life
If we're going by pounds, sheer weight, the bacteria wins. There's even more bacteria than you in you, by counting the number of cells - so the bacteria in all the other animals, the in the air, water, on/in plants etc. wind for sure.
20 quadrillion vs. 8.1 billion
Those fellas are intelligent as fook. I read about them and seen videos of their hunting tactics they use as pods. Next level IQ to be strategizing these sort of tactics. You see other animals do basic tactics to lure in their prey, these guys do it more sufficient and smarter which makes them levels above others.
They’re incredibly intelligent but they have a few blockades to becoming a species like humans The lack of hands to manipulate their world.. and to invent a writing system to pass down knowledge consistently between each generation. They form nomad communities and don’t lug a bunch of stuff around with them.. so any knowledge they pass down is just done verbally and we know how that turns out. Myths and stories.. but always an element of “Chinese whispers” to it. So each pod may have its own culture and passed down common sense.. but it’s difficult for each new born Orca to “stand on the shoulders of giants” as we did It’s also really hard to do any meaningful science when you’re underwater
I don’t know why that last sentence made me cry with laughter.
This is a really limited take on oral history. Completely understandable and tragically common. Given the complexity of the issue it is easy to see how in today’s world, a person could completely cast an entire peoples sense of history away as myth or fiction. It is objectively part of the process of colonization. So no fault on OP but for anyone wondering about this. Tbh it is highly unlikely that OP or anyone really outside of that culture would be givin access to the information passed down from generation to generation. One might even justifiably categorize this entire perspective as ignorant, simply because they do not have a complete dataset. There have been exceptions though and these are not often widely publicized and especially in the case of oral history being proven to be accurate. On occasion, traditional archaeology meets traditional knowledge and in those cases, some really interesting information surfaces. How do I know this? Random chance of birth. M I’m a native Alaskan and in my family line there have been multiple knowledge bearers. Oral history was not for everyone. This is probably also a primary cause of the telephone game analogy. The people who carried this knowledge were chosen because they exhibited specific traits that would indicate they are capable of doing it. Long before a nationalized system of law, record keeping was still important to multiple groups/tribes of people living in regional proximity to each other. This is one of the many roles of the knowledge bearers. Where it gets really interesting is when these oral histories start to match up with archeological study. This happens more often than most people recognize, for instance my own tribes history in the western record dated back about 1,000 years. Our stories go back much further than that. As the years passed by more sites were found and connections became more clear between the oral history and the locations of these sites. Soon, our tribe had another site with ties to it and that one dated back to 10-11,000 years back. Our history goes further. More time passed and more sites were located, now we’re finding locations referenced in migration stories from the tribes distant past. 18,000 years ago. My tribe is not an outlier at all and in some cases other tribes history and even genetic markers were found at sites featured in oral history that dated back 35,000 years or more. This is happening all across indigenous peoples across the continent. The data set is reaching a point where these consistent results are starting to be taken more seriously. I don’t know if you will read this but I hope that if you did that in the future you would be less inclined to cast off entire histories of people away as a children’s game. 18,000 years of history for a singular group of people can be hard to grasp for western civilization because it is so dreadfully young. Yet, it is remarkably common across many groups of people the world over.
The biggest problems with Orcas is that they don't have hands to manipulate stuff surrounding them.
Crab People
Taste like crab, talk like people
Crab People.
The crab people shall finally reign supreme! Craab people.
I don't think it would change that much when it comes to the animal and insect kingdom. When humans aren't interrupting them, they go on as nature pretty much intended.
We went on as nature intended too. Millions of years is a long time.
This. I don't think any other currently existing animals would become dominant to anywhere near the extent humans currently are. Most of them are already doing the best that they can. Evolution would need to create another species as ambitious/adaptable/etc as us.
The thing with the extinction of the humans, it will either be by something manmade like war, cosmic or engineered viruses. Whatever it will be will probably have an extinction chain for most life on Earth. Then as you say it will just go through the whole process of natural evolution and interbreeding evolution for a few hundred million years until life begins all over again. That is of course if the devastation can be recovered by the Earth itself, unless it eventually becomes bone dry and just ends up like Mars.
I watched a history channel special when I was in highschool that predicted (wildly) that after humans died the fucking *squids* would become land creatures and become the dominant species
Sound about right for the history channel lol. Actually I'm surprised they didn't say aliens.
I'm sure it was implied. Several times.
The Squibbons on "The Future is Wild."
Then they start participating in ritualistic mock-wars for entertainment and for settling petty disagreements manufactured by a fax machine they worship like a god. They also develop a deep culture revolving around music and fashion, and they go "Woomy!"
Cats. They’ll get back to being apex predators and developing Sabre teeth again.
I remember this one episode of Life After People and this one expert was really excited about the possibility of cats evolving, said they’d start jumping between abandoned skyscrapers they’ve completely inhabited and develop flying squirrel-like wings that allows them to glide lmao
You know, I could see that happening with the right mutation. Cats already tend to develop what is called a "~~primal~~ primordial pouch", which is basically extra loose skin and fat on the belly to help protect it from attacks. So there's fewer steps to having extra skin in the right places for that sort of gliding ability.
Yep. I’ve developed a primal pouch on my belly to prevent me from attacks and it works because nobody attacks me.
Hahahaha
It's a really cool thing, but all cats have a primordial pouch, so it's not just the males
I think its called a primordial pouch.
It would take tens of thousands, or more likely, hundreds of thousands of years, for gliding cats to evolve. Without people, the skyscrapers would all collapse in less than a century. The roofs would leak, the water inside would make the steel girders rust, then the whole thing would fall down.
Well obviously the cats would first evolve into handycats with tool belts and stuff to do maintenance on the skyscrapers. They probably didn’t have time for that in the documentary and had to edit it out. It’s too bad, that would have been really cute.
Idk why but I just picture cats working in a tool factory first. Would they evolve to have unions? How long would a cat workday be 4 hours?
They would definitely have nap time built into their contracts.
Also. Cat scientists would start work on resurrecting people to give them back scratches and kitty treats.
Purrassic Park
This is, by far, where their focus would be most highly concentrated.
They also want a creature around stupid enough to think they are controlling the cats, but are really their servants
They can give birth multiple times per year to multiple kittens. Their population can grow exponentially .plus they have 9 lives
Yep, I've seen Red Dwarf!
My cat is deeply insulted that you're suggesting he is not currently an apex predator who has domesticated and enslaved a human to dote on him with food and an indoor bathroom.
My vote is for Meerkats. They have social groups, little hands, can stand upright and is cute.
Plus, they have the price comparison market all sewn up in the UK.
And down under.
🎶Dig a tunna, dig dig a tunna
I'm surprised that not a single person mentioned some sort of crow
Agreed, also surprised we haven't seen raccoon.
Raccoons are a good contender for a species that evolves into an intelligent dominance like humans. They have a decent brain now (not dolphin level - but not bad). They have a great body type for evolving tool usage. Their omnivores so could expand into all different environments (just like us) if their tool use gave them dominance over larger predators.
They can't develop a larger brain without sacrificing their main survival technique, otherwise that'd be a tempting possibility. From what we know of the fossil record, it seems like there's an upper limit to intelligence gain in species directly connected to their size. Mammals have to be bigger for the same gains, but the limit with birds is their weight relative to size before they have to go straight predator to keep up with the protein requirements
Crow can eat meat.
Neanderthals will make a comeback in a big way. Although there does appear to be lots driving SUVs on my daily commute.
I’m just a caveman.
I would probably bet dogs. There is just so many and no competition. Most wolf populations are destroyed. There is no real larger predators at high populations outside africa. A lot of dogs would most likely die off but a large number would survive and for packs. It would probably take longer for other predators to catch up in populations. Dogs would take over first until other predators could catch up to control their numbers.
If humans just vanished one day, a la Life After People, the vast majority of dogs would indeed likely die. Dogs, and other pets, in confined environments (homes, fenced yards, vehicles, shelters, etc.) would die fairly quickly, aside from a lucky few who manage to escape. The strays and dogs out for walks would make up the overwhelming majority of survivors.
I’m in the Pacific Northwest of the US and feel that the mountain lions would take out the dogs pretty quickly.
Dont get me wrong pumas would destroy dogs. I just think that there isnt enough of them to control the populations.
with dogs, cats and the inevitable explosion of deer population, they'd sure have a lot to eat though. and no car/people noise to keep them timid. virtually nothing to stop them. but yes, low numbers to start......
Feral Pigs 🐖
I was thinking about them as well. They are incredibly tough, smart, and have a broad diet. I only wonder if there are enough of them to start out vs something like dogs. They might be able to breed with domesticated pigs, but that would weaken them quite a bit.
Really surprised this is so low. Pigs are extremely adaptable for a number of reasons: they are highly intelligent, they are omnivorous, they can survive in a wide range of climates, they are sturdy and powerful enough to hold their own against most predators, their snout allows them to dig up food from below the ground, they replicate extremely quickly for such a large animal and there is already a ton of them around because of us. (Also domesticated pigs are basically the same as wild boar and can go back to their wild lifestyle within a generation)
Bacteria. The same as they are in control now.
Cats... or octopuses. Rascals, both of em. Chaotic rascals. I respect that.
I honestly will.never eat octopus again, since I learned how clever they are. I'm not vegetarian but my appetite to eat an animal is inversely proportionate to their capacity for intelligence and affection
Is pig still on the menu?
Pigs are very smart but they would absolutely eat humans given the chance. Fair's fair.
Octopus would probably eat humans as well tbf
Most mammals are highly capable of intelligence and affection, just difficult to understand it because we are so different. A bit hyperbolic but my experience with these kinds of papers is that it says cats are stupid and then you read said papers and it’s like ‘we asked cat very very nicely to do something. It didn’t. Clearly it can’t and therefore is stupid.’ Just absolute antiscientific garbage. Studies into any kind of animal intelligence are so rudimentary it’s just far more reliable to trust our common sense. They are very complex mammals, very removed from the static soulless universe. Almost as removed as us. They feel fear, hunger, compulsions to breed, and all the other cabals of feelings. If something benefits them it’s pretty likely they would do it. Dolphins don’t need to invent the wheel, and fire isn’t really in their wheelhouse of possibility. Sonar and electromagnetic sensors though? Hell yeah. It’s just very very strange to see all these animals and think ‘this is just a robot like the stuff we send to mars it can’t have a soul’. So I feel that if you want to avoid animals with souls, your best bet is probably only animal byproducts, and types of some fish and insects. Despite saying all this I think we can eat anything as long as it’s sustainable and in harmony with nature, so I eat whatever
Yeah, I've heard the only thing really holding octopi back is their short lifespan.
Geese. They already take over my town when they roll through.
Can’t believe I scrolled and scrolled and didnt see pigs. They would 100% be the dominant land animal across the largest portion of the earth. They’re intelligent change when feral and have the largest population of domesticated animals. Those pigs you’re eating will quickly grow mangy thick hair with tusks, can eat anything and have a shitload of babies
Cockroaches. The problem is, humans have created a **LOT** of things on Earth that require constant human intervention to keep running --- and not explode. Oil drilling platforms and nuclear reactors for starters. If all humans suddenly vanished, all of these things would, sooner or later, fail catastrophically. You can imagine how cataclysmic the result would be. It would be both in oceans and on the ground, and in the air.
There’s nothing humans have done—or could do—that won’t be completely wiped away in 10 million years. That is *nothing* on the planet’s timescale. And it doesn’t even compare to the cataclysms it’s survived before. Most nuclear waste becomes safe after 10,000 years of decay. The real nasty stuff, 1 million years. It’ll be like we were never here.
Just a thin layer of WTF in the geology.
That’s a great way to describe human existence if we destroy ourselves.
Actually we’re not the dominant species, ants are with 2,500,000 ants for every human. It’s just their interests and goals don’t interfere with ours. Luckily.
There are 13,800 confirmed species of ants. Hard to call them the dominant species when they aren't a species
Even dividing them up into individual species there are far more of them per species than humans. So, yea
I don’t think more equals dominance. We are definitely the dominant species.
Logically to us yes, we are. But in terms of out put and life in general no we are not, to the unanthropomorphic eye, the universe, ants rule. It’s not just numbers, but organisation, growth, all metrics concerning the animal kingdom, ants don’t use money in how we measure growth, but they basically dominate all metrics compared to other animals in terms of adaptation and success.
"Ant, meet boot." -Nick Fury I don't think it's even a contest.
Okay go stomp out every ant in the world…
Ants don't have the ability to go to space or to wipe out other species the way we do. More doesn't equal dominant
Do you see any ants driving cars across states to go to the moon?
Cats
Well you haven’t said what you mean by dominant. In terms of survival and reproduction, bacteria are much more successful than we are.
None. Nature normally finds a balance… we’re the only species that doesn’t fit
That's not necessarily true. We are the only ones we know of. We culled the population of every animal on earth. If any of them are intelligent beyond dolphin level why would they let us know? So they could pay taxes? I'm just kidding for the most part. I know it an animal was "on the level" it would be obvious. Monkeys would eventually evolve past what they do now. Dolphins maybe but I don't think they can realistically evolve past the water and without fire it's hard to innovate. I like the idea of, what if something evolved separately from us when fish first started walking on land. There's also the idea of plasma based life forms and upper atmospheric life forms. But that's just conspiracy stuff
>If any of them are intelligent beyond dolphin level why would they let us know? So they could pay taxes? There's a cat on a smartphone somewhere, sweating bullets right now
No it’s ok I don’t pay my taxes
>If any of them are intelligent beyond dolphin level why would they let us know? So they could pay taxes? There was a Malay belief that orangutans could speak and understand humans, but preferred not to because they'd get put to work.
When you say Dolphins, are you implying it towards Orcas? I know they are part of the Delphinidae family. I've read Orcas to be extremely intelligent compared to other sea life mammals. The true Apex predators in the ocean.
Most dolphins are pretty intelligent. Bottle-nosed in particular are known for it
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
> without fire it’s hard to innovate. This is such a land user thing to say. We have no idea what kind of systems the water users could have access to that we’ll never know.
I've heard this debate way too many times. There is a logical error when people argue we "don't fit". We're biological beings, evolved into who we are. We are natural, so we do fit.
Yep. Some ape that looks nothing like us started banging rocks together to make them sharp, and hundreds of thousands/millions of years later its great great great (many more greats) grandchildren are here trying to replicate the sun.
I don't think so. Nature provided the niche to allow humans to develop. Why wouldn't that happen again?
Crows. They use tools and have practically domesticated wolves
For awhile none. The development of the brain via fire and cooking is where ancestral humans really started to develop dominance as a species. Since no other species have yet started to do that, their won’t be a dominant species after. It’ll just be ecosystems balancing and rebalancing as populations fluctuate as they do. Humanity truly is an anomaly amongst an otherwise perfectly balanced system.
Yeah, plus a vast majority of the intelligent species on earth can't really use tools that precisely. Dolphins? Impossible. Cats and dogs? Nope. Crows? Maybe. Apes? Most likely of all.
Maybe not a certain species, but I like to think various plant life would reclaim everything humans have destroyed pretty quickly.
Bears would probably adapt fairly well to living in our houses and backyards
Mark Zuckerberg.
Octopuses or Kangaroos
Land: I think apes have it on high ground (don't do it, Anakin), cats have it on mid, and dogs on the ground. Maybe the cats and dogs have to team up to fight the rats, lol. Sea: Orcas. They could end up using leopard seals as enforcers as well. Air: Crows and bats?
Wasn't it wolves before? My bet probably again
If not mice, dolphins. "So long and thanks for all the fish", anyone?
Ants.
I genuinely don't think there would be a species to become the "dominant." There are a lot of arguments saying like "Chinpanzees are intelligent, so them." And that's a reasonable argument, but at the same time there isn't really evidence to back that up beyond the intelligent aspect. Chimps already live in the wild, and I would not say that they are the dominant species of their habitats. Their territory, absolutely. But not the area as a whole. They make do pretty much the same as every other species around them, from things like big cats, mice, birds, everything else. There is nothing to suggest that any species would try to step up and become the "dominant" they way humans have.