We tend to define dominance in terms of tool use, language and culture, and the ability to modify our environment. This is a very anthropocentric view that prizes the things we happen to be good at and ignores those we aren’t.
Bacteria outnumber and outmass us, have colonised more of the planet and will likely be here long after we have gone. For 99.9 per cent of the history of life on Earth, the planet has managed perfectly well without human-style intelligence and if we disappeared, there is no particular reason to suppose that anything would necessarily step up to take our place.
Octopuses and dolphins are both already very intelligent, but living in the water rules out fire and electricity, so refining metals and building machines would be impossible for them. Evolving to live on land would be a 100-million-year endeavour.
Meanwhile, on land, existing primates would have a much easier time moving into the environments we had vacated. Baboons, which already live in close proximity with humans in South Africa, are social and have similar intelligence to chimpanzees.
In the immediate aftermath of human extinction, they would be able to take over human settlements and scavenge the food and livestock we left behind. This would probably result in a sudden population increase.
When the food ran out, they would still benefit from the shelter of our buildings and might begin using some of the metal tools and knives we left behind. This might give them enough of an advantage that they would outcompete other primates and predators.
Complex human machines would all rust away long before the baboons figured out how to use and repair them. But over thousands of years, the ready availability of refined metals and plastics might allow them to kick-start their own technological progress.
Read more:
- Could humans evolve again from apes if we went extinct?
- If humans became extinct, how long would it take for all traces of us to vanish?
- How your weekly shop could help prevent a mass extinction
- Five ways humanity might become extinct
Asked by: Harvey Smith, via email
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