Humans Do An Epic Wipe-Out. Who Gets to Rule Earth?

[Raw Shark]

My money's on the octupi, with cuttlefish as a subordinate but significant minority. Take your pick!

[Solauren]

Depends on the cause of the wipe out.

I'm assuming for this discussion, we manage to wipe our selves out without it involving nuclear weapons or missing an asteroid impact?

If so, probably Octopi as you said. The show 'afterman' seemed to think so.

[Tribble]

Depends on the cause of the wipe out.

I'm assuming for this discussion, we manage to wipe our selves out without it involving nuclear weapons or missing an asteroid impact?

If so, probably Octopi as you said. The show 'afterman' seemed to think so.

Would an all out nuclear war wiped them out though? I imagine most of the nuclear weapons would be focussed on land. Even if there was a nuclear winter and nuclear waste spilling into the oceans, I would imagine octopi would likely survive somewhere?

And I agree, if they can predict our soccer matches in advance, they could certainly take over the world in our absence.

[Raw Shark]

Depends on the cause of the wipe out.

I'm assuming for this discussion, we manage to wipe our selves out without it involving nuclear weapons or missing an asteroid impact?

If so, probably Octopi as you said. The show 'afterman' seemed to think so.

Would an all out nuclear war wiped them out though? I imagine most of the nuclear weapons would be focussed on land. Even if there was a nuclear winter and nuclear waste spilling into the oceans, I would imagine octopi would likely survive somewhere?

And I agree, if they can predict our soccer matches in advance, they could certainly take over the world in our absence.

That was kind of my thought process. Nukes only hit land, the octos are smart enough to avoid the waste spills, go deep for a while, develop civilization eventually. I don't know, this is why I floated (haha) the idea to others.

[bilateralrope]

If the land is sufficiently fucked up, with the oceans doing better, octopi are in the best position to develop technology and take over.

Get enough dust in the air to block out enough sunlight and you're looking at the elimination of anything that relies a food chain that involves the surface. Leaving only life around deep sea events that relies on chemosynthesis. Until the dust settles and new life evolves.

If humans are wiped out by a plague, octopi are at a disadvantage due to difficulties with underwater fire. Other primates are not looking so good

However, chimpanzees, and every other great ape, seem to be unable to learn tool use behaviour outside of their ZLS - i.e. in cases where a behaviour would not just be triggered, but copied. For example, in a 2009 experiment no species of great ape apart from humans (including chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans) were able to spontaneously bend a flexible strip into a loop to hook and retrieve an otherwise unreachable object, under any condition, even with human teaching.[80] Since loops fall securely outside of great apes' ZLS—perhaps as there was never any use for this behaviour in their ecological environment—this behaviour is unable to be learned socially by non-human primates.

So I'd bet on a bird species. Probably a corvid or a parrot. It's going to depend on which of them are vulnerable to whatever plague wipes us out.

[Solauren]

Given the failure rate of rockets and similiar technology, if every nuclear weapon in the world let fly, some of them would land in a body of water.

Also, I wouldn't put it past some of the previous or current world leaders to have some of the larger weapons targetted to hit the various oceans as a 'fuck you, I'm taking you with me!'

[Batman]

The effects of modern day nukes are VASTLY overrated (I'd expect people ESPECIALLY here to know this). The hanfful of hits on the seas (intentional (and there's not going to be many of those) or otherwise to have negligible effects on the deap seas.

[Solauren]

The effects of modern day nukes are VASTLY overrated (I'd expect people ESPECIALLY here to know this). The hanfful of hits on the seas (intentional (and there's not going to be many of those) or otherwise to have negligible effects on the deap seas.

I was more thinking 'dirty bombs', and hitting the ocean repeatedly. You know, a concentrated effort to do as much damage as possible to collapse as much of the eco system as possible.

But, back on the main topic, what are the odds of avians developing into a tool using species?

[Batman]

Nobody (not even the US and the USSR at their height) had enough of a nuclear arsenal they could waste a significant fraction (say, 27000% of it) on a pointless 'salted Earth' operation that was guaranteed to fail anyway. We never had enough firepower to eliminate mankind-not initially, anyway.

[bilateralrope]

But, back on the main topic, what are the odds of avians developing into a tool using species?

They are already there. Tool making is the next thing to look for.

Look at that paragraph I quoted, then watch this video.