Who would die with us?

[Iroscato]

Supposing humanity died out overnight due to some cataclysmic event, say a GM supervirus, what species of animals and plant would suffer huge losses, or outright extinction, without us?

Also, what species would most likely replace us?

[General Zod]

I would expect cows to be one of the most obvious candidates for extinction seeing they have no real natural predators and largely depend on humans. Other domesticated animals would face huge losses, but probably adapt.

[Mr Bean]

I would expect cows to be one of the most obvious candidates for extinction seeing they have no real natural predators and largely depend on humans. Other domesticated animals would face huge losses, but probably adapt.

Mostly correct, our live-stock would suffer massive losses. Your talking even possible mass die offs for things like Turkeys and some breeds of cattle. Some livestock (Pigs) could fade right back into nature with minimum losses as would some pets like cats. Dogs would take a little longer to go feral but there's your new circle of life, wolves, dogs and cats as the new apex predators along with bears and mountain lions fighting over the new resources with pigs, sheep, cattle and chickens.

[Iroscato]

I was thinking species which we saved from extinction would die out without our help, such as the red squirrel. There is a flip-side, however. Imagine how much the fish stocks would swell in the months following our demise, for example.

[Jawawithagun]

Some livestock (Pigs) could fade right back into nature with minimum losses as would some pets like cats.

I disagree here. The losses in pigs will still be massive. While yes, pigs can easily survive off the land if they escape from a farm the flip side of the coin is that there are truly staggering amounts of them kept on the farms. Too many for a significant percentage of them to survive and minimum losses for them will still be 90+%. That's not accounting for the fact that most of them will be in no position to gain access to natural foodstuffs after the humans disappear and will thus simply starve in their pens.

[Serafina]

The major problem for any escaped foodstock will simply be a lack of food in their area. Not only will most of them starve to death, but they will also devastate the area around them by eating every piece of edible vegetation.

Now i am hardly an expert, but this could potentially turn into local environmental catastrophies - a lot of land could simply be eaten into a wasteland. That will only be a long-term problem in unstable areas where the topsoil can erode quickly, after most of the animals are dead plants would begin their usual repopulation-process.

[Jawawithagun]

Oh, rats will die off in troves too. Current rat populations in cities around the world just cannot be maintained without all the foodstuffs human throw away.

[Serafina]

Oh, rats will die off in troves too. Current rat populations in cities around the world just cannot be maintained without all the foodstuffs human throw away.

I guess the bottom line is this:
Any animal that lives with or from humans in some way will die off in droves, since we will no longer produce large amounts of food with modern agriculture. The more adaptable species will integrate into a new ecosystem after a while, the others might die out.

[Jawawithagun]

I guess the bottom line is this:
Any animal that lives with or from humans in some way will die off in droves, since we will no longer produce large amounts of food with modern agriculture. The more adaptable species will integrate into a new ecosystem after a while, the others might die out.

And any that get out will fuck up those species that do not live off humans when they try to open up new food sources.

[General Zod]

Oh, rats will die off in troves too. Current rat populations in cities around the world just cannot be maintained without all the foodstuffs human throw away.

I'm sure the rats will get by just fine. There's going to be plenty of carrion about from a mass dieoff.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Oh, rats will die off in troves too. Current rat populations in cities around the world just cannot be maintained without all the foodstuffs human throw away.

I guess the bottom line is this:
Any animal that lives with or from humans in some way will die off in droves, since we will no longer produce large amounts of food with modern agriculture.

Not just food. I recall that mosquitoes have undergone a massive population boom in tandem with the rise of civilization, since agriculture produces huge areas of standing water they can breed in.

[Iroscato]

Ok, so we've established would die and who wouldn't. So which species would be the likeliest candidate to replace us?

(Woo 100th post )

[Alyrium Denryle]

Ok, so we've established would die and who wouldn't. So which species would be the likeliest candidate to replace us?

(Woo 100th post )

No way to say. Hell, a sapient species may never evolve on this planet again.

[Jawawithagun]

I'm sure the rats will get by just fine. There's going to be plenty of carrion about from a mass dieoff.

For how long? The carrion will not last for long and it might just make things worse for the rats. Sudden overabundance of food and lessening of danger creates a breeding boom that makes the hit much harder when its all used up.

[Simon_Jester]

Ok, so we've established would die and who wouldn't. So which species would be the likeliest candidate to replace us?(Woo 100th post )

No way to say. Hell, a sapient species may never evolve on this planet again.

Well, it happened randomly within about 400 million years or so of the emergence of land-based life; I would hardly be surprised if it happened again. But yeah, no way to tell. Whatever animal did so would probably be no more recognizable as a "modern" species than we'd be able to recognize ourselves as descendants of thirty million year old lemurs.

[PainRack]

The God of Evolution has spoken. As revealed on Mondos island, the ultimate successor will be a cockroach:D

[Serafina]

Well, if you want to speak about the "immeadeate" future (in geological timespans), we can look at the requirements to replace us.
Said animal would basically need a good baseline intelligence AND limbs that are capable of delicate manipulation.
The former throws most species out, of course. The latter throws dolphins and birds out, regardless of their intelligence - they can't really evolve hands, at least not without loosing something that is absolutely essential for the way they live.
Apes, racoons and a couple of other species have the potential to fill the "intelligent tooluser with civilisation"-role. Whether that will actually happen is not predictable.

[Broomstick]

Well, if you want to speak about the "immeadeate" future (in geological timespans), we can look at the requirements to replace us.
Said animal would basically need a good baseline intelligence AND limbs that are capable of delicate manipulation.
The former throws most species out, of course. The latter throws dolphins and birds out, regardless of their intelligence - they can't really evolve hands, at least not without loosing something that is absolutely essential for the way they live.
Apes, racoons and a couple of other species have the potential to fill the "intelligent tooluser with civilisation"-role. Whether that will actually happen is not predictable.

I disagree with regards to birds - crows have been observed making and using tools, and some of my parrots are quite adept with their feet, which have oppossable digits. They have no problem holding something with their beak while manipulating with one foot and standing on the other. That said, due to energy constraints I think any bird succeeding us as Master Animal will wind up giving up flight, but there's precedent for that.

Anyhow - among the plants Z. mays or corn will disappear without us. So will many varieties of banana and any "seedless" form of fruit.

[General Zod]

The former throws most species out, of course. The latter throws dolphins and birds out, regardless of their intelligence - they can't really evolve hands, at least not without loosing something that is absolutely essential for the way they live.

Who says they can't evolve hands? I think it's a bit presumptuous to definitively say whether or not something can or cannot evolve a specific trait given enough time.

[Serafina]

The former throws most species out, of course. The latter throws dolphins and birds out, regardless of their intelligence - they can't really evolve hands, at least not without loosing something that is absolutely essential for the way they live.

Who says they can't evolve hands? I think it's a bit presumptuous to definitively say whether or not something can or cannot evolve a specific trait given enough time.

"Given enough time", yes, certainly. It would just be a much greater leap than for some other species - and it's possible that they simply won't have the necessary selective pressure to do so.

[Akhlut]

Firstly, there would be enormous ecological shifts if humans were to suddenly go extinct. Various animals in zoos, sanctuaries, personal collections, and wild animal parks would get loose and possibly start breeding and living in a feral state. While a lot of them rely on passive measures to help keep the animals in their areas, there are plenty of half-assed drive-through 'safaris' around the world that rely on simply keeping their tigers and lions well fed and under surveillence to keep them in their cages. As soon as you lose that, I imagine you'll see things like non-indigenous big cat and other large predator populations in places they shouldn't be (or haven't been for millenia). Same with large herbivores, as things like elephants and rhinos work out how to escape their enclosures. Primates could start to get out too, as they have the brains and manual dexterity to figure out how to leave, especially when they start to get hungry and there are no more electrified fences to keep them from trying to figure out their enclosures.

So, we'd see enormous changes in ecology if even a tiny percentage of animals escape. Hell, in the US alone, there are estimated to be over 12,000 tigers being held as pets, so even if only 1% survive in the wild, that's a viable population (prone to inbreeding problems, yes, but still large enough to avoid some problems); that's not even counting tigers in zoos or animal parks. And that's just tigers, that's not even counting more mundane exotic animals, like other wild cats, small primates, or anything of that nature.

Thus, it makes it very difficult to say with any certainity what would survive if we were to suddenly go extinct. If a viable population of tigers all of a sudden exists in Ireland, due to zoos and private collections, how does that affect the rest of the island? It certainly doesn't resemble primordial Ireland. What of the US, which now has wild elephants, tigers, lions, and horses, in addition to its native bison, bears, and cougars? This isn't even taking into consideration insects like bees, wood-borer beetles, and ants, which can now move with utter impunity and have nothing at all trying to stop them. Basically, what we have is every ecosystem on earth competing with each other in every ecosystem on earth. There's no telling what the outcome would be.

This also leads us to being unable to tell what, if any, animal would replace us in our niche. You'd need a social animal capable of manipulating its surroundings, though, so the most obvious candidates would be our fellow primates, followed by birds and elephants.

[General Zod]

The former throws most species out, of course. The latter throws dolphins and birds out, regardless of their intelligence - they can't really evolve hands, at least not without loosing something that is absolutely essential for the way they live.

Who says they can't evolve hands? I think it's a bit presumptuous to definitively say whether or not something can or cannot evolve a specific trait given enough time.

"Given enough time", yes, certainly. It would just be a much greater leap than for some other species - and it's possible that they simply won't have the necessary selective pressure to do so.

Maybe they would, maybe they won't. Trying to guess what evolutionary path a species might take is a lot like trying to guess the winning numbers for the lottery.

[Iroscato]

Trying to guess what evolutionary path a species might take is a lot like trying to guess the winning numbers for the lottery.

Whilst on huge amounts of drugs and there being 100 balls each game. Evolution has trillions of possiblities, but I'm fairly confident a sentient species would re-evolve. My prime candidate would be either rats or chimpanzees or some other species of ape.

[Rossum]

How many types of animals are there that regularly manipulate human tools? I mean if humans died out then we'd leave all these buildings, factories, power plants, cans of cat food, ships, aquariums, and books laying around. Imagine if dinosaurs had built huge castles, kept cans of brontosaurus meat in big supermarkets, wrote books full of stuff, and carried around projectile weapons. How would that have effected the development of our ancestors?


While its certain that most of our writings would disintegrate long before any new species could evolve the ability to decode them. Computers wouldn't last long unless there was some kind of self-repairing computer core built to store all that information. Books might be able to last a while if they were kept preserved in a vacuum or the like, but the best bet would be anything written in stone or other non-rusting medium. Gold might work for that. I'm not sure how long our plastic items would last... I mean plastic takes a long time to biodegrade but I think a plastic-eating microbe would evolve long before an intelligent species evolved that would really care what our G.I. Joe action figures looked like.


Raccoon Bill: Hey Jim, look at this ancient human artifact! *holds up a toy action figure*

Raccoon Jim: Wow! I've never seen one of those is such good condition. This is the find of a century!

Raccoon Bill: Indeed Jim, but look closely at this plastic item it has in its hand. *He presses a little button on the side and the toy gun fires a little plastic projectile with a spring*

Raccoon Jim: Amazing! What do you thing that means?

Raccoon Bill: Well, I think it means that all those metal tools we found preserved in that human bunker were some kind of weapons... they aren't exactly suited for us but if we can do some experimenting I'm sure we can harness their power for ourselves!

Raccoon Jim: Yes... YES!! With the ancient powers of the humans in our hands then the dark-stripe clan will finally be able to drive back those disgusting white-stripes for good. And then the grays will recognize our greatness! Now, lets search for some more of those bottles of ancient firewater before we take this back to the chief.

[madd0ct0r]

Given the time scales you're talking about, about the only thing I'd expect to survive to the next sapient would localised areas of high radiation.

Much like the one in Africa we assume was once a natural reactor. Extraordinary claims ect.