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Which animal will replace humans as Earth's dominant species? This scientist has an idea

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Which animal will replace humans as Earth's dominant species? This scientist has an idea

His answer is the octopus. What say you?

75 comments
  • Crows and ravens. Highly adaptive. At home in a deep forest or the remains of a burnt out city. Social. Predisposed to intelligence.

    The whole concept of a "dominant species" is also a bit ridiculous and probably shouldn't be bought into whole cloth. If what we mean by "dominant species" is 'the most radiatively expansive single species before allopatric speciation takes over..", then pick any one of the many many invasive we've spread around the planet. Our intelligence has allowed for a massive and basically instantaneous geologic layer globally, but it's not something that can be handed off in the way that a vasculature did for land plants or the ability to decompose cellulose and lignin did for fungi.. unless we want it to be.

    If you really want intelligence to make it's mark on the earth we need a way to move it from our species into other species, because we're not long for this world. Move the genes specific to human nervous tissue and neurons into bees, ants, termites, any formian creature. That'll get this party started.

  • I think we will screw up this planet even more before the end. So, probably bugs.

  • I'd bet on racoons or some primate. They aren't going to get far though until there's enough continental subduction to reveal fresh metal and fossil fuel deposits, and that could take a very, very long time.

  • I would argue it depends on the method humans get removed from the equation. Chances are, humans are going to leave behind such a mess of that it’s going to be pretty hard for most things to survive.

    Anything living off hydrothermal vents should be fine, even if the Earth undergoes prolonged nuclear winter or even a snowball earth scenario. Everything else is at great risk of going extinct. Tardigrades should be fine though, since they can survive all sorts of weird extremes.

  • I think they could become dominant if they acquired language. Maybe do some crazy sign language with their 8 tentacles. Also their short lifespan could be overcome if they worked together as a group or a hivemind, like the way ants do.

75 comments