World With No Humanity

One day Humanity will end - maybe with a whimper, still locked to this planet (or maybe our solar system). Or perhaps we will have broken away, and at massive expense of resources, launched arks of humanity to distant planets, to colonise another star and its planets, leaving a Dying Earth behind. But in any event, the end of humanities reign on Earth will come. If you were a betting man, then on Earth it would be sooner rather than later on a planet exhausted by mankind’s depredations, with famine and disease sweeping around a poisoned globe. Although we may just take the whole biosphere with us in a blaze of nuclear light …..

Earth's Next Dominant Species May Not Be Our Descendents

So what comes next?

 

Well in the great scheme of things, and by that I mean the geological epochs that govern the Earth, the 25,000 years or so that make up the mini epoch of the 'Killer Ape', when mankind will have really impacted the planet, is nothing, a mere blip that covered one 'Ice Age' and bit of global warming, and in terms of the Solar System or Galaxy, its not even a second on the clock ... tick, tock and humanity has been and gone.

But assuming that we haven't poisoned it completely, or lit up the skies with a second sun for a while, Earth Will Abide, and life will resume on the planet. Maybe there will be enough surviving descendants of the Killer Ape to slowly but surely (assuming no extinction event occurs), start repopulating the plains, maybe as hunter-gatherers - only to resume the sort of 'civilisations' that existed in the past.

Lack of resources such as iron and coal, may limit the extent to which it can rise this time round (although 'mining' the remains of banks - metal coins - and landfills etc may provide some 'metals'). So a interstellar observer may see a new Egypt or Rome, with barbarians populating the steppes (if horses, or some equivalent such as camels survived), but no rise into the Industrial / Technological revolutions of the 18th century because the Iron and coal that powered those events are just not there on a wasted earth.

Of course if humanity was truly wiped from the planet, and that’s at least a 50/50 possibility, then depending upon the cause, and assuming it’s not a planet sterilising event, then evolution will just offer another species a chance to 'rule' the Earth. We have had the Plants, then the Reptiles, then the Dinosaurs, then the Mammals .... would it then be the Insects? Possibly, if there was an evolutionary imperative that forced the social insects such as Bees, Ants, or Termites to develop higher levels of activity ... maybe fighting over limited resources, but is hard to see their limited brains developing to that level. They might dominate the fauna of Earth by their numbers, and spread, but not by intelligent design.

But there are other creatures, mammals admittedly, who have enough guile to flourish in a world without humanity, but they would all need some additional evolutionary push to become the dominant species.

The Great Apes – our nearest cousins: These would seem the natural successors, but in fact they took an evolutionary line that led to them not reaching the potential of humans .... but maybe given the right circumstances, they may back evolve in enough respects, to be able to get out on the plains and start hunting (this being the apparent driver for the common ancestor of Apes and Humans to split). However, it seems likely that we will have made them extinct inside 100 years, and so they may not be around to get their chance to succeed us. So we probably have to look elsewhere for the new lords of the Earth. 

Baboons are big, aggressive social animals, not as bright as Chimps and Bonobo’s etc, but far more aggressive – they are cunning raiders of farms and each others territories, and they are not under immediate threat of extinction by man. They learn quickly, and have a selfish kind of greedy cunning, that I suspect is what our first ancestors displayed when they broke with the apes. To me they look the strongest contenders. 

 

Of the others contenders, well there are rats for example, they exist in great numbers, and are quick to exploit environments and opportunities, but their small physical size means that even in great numbers, they are still 'prey' to many other species. These sorts of creatures were around during the rise of the Dinosaurs and just don't have the physical mass to make it. They would however evolve into a lot of variants, to fill a lot of ecological niches (including large sizes), if there were no predators such as cats, dogs or eagles around. So one could image Rhino size rats given the opportunity and time by nature.

Then of course we may be leading ourselves down the wrong path by thinking of ‘Lords of the Earth’ …. It might be the Oceans that produce the next dominant animal on the planet … the Dolphin or Whale families are suggested as possibly intelligent, but while they remain in the sea, we may never see this potential exhibited, even if humans were gone. Apart from the obvious threat of extinction now, there is also the lack of need. Without humans the oceans would once again teem with fish (in the 17th century, some cod banks were so abundant that it was said that a man could almost walk across their backs in the German Sea), and so with food a plenty, where’s the need to conquer the land from which their distant ancestors evolved? The seas Poets and Singers of ballads they may be (or become), but lords of the Earth, probably not.

However the oceans does hold one other candidate, that’s highly intelligent, has appendages that can grasp, manipulate and propel, and can even now make its way across land in limited circumstances – the octopus (cephalopod molluscs). The may even have evolved from land creatures or shoreline creatures in the past, and are big brained and big eyed, and curious ….. So given a free run, they may well become the masters of the aquatic and partially aquatic worlds. Whether they could take on a land world with predators I am not sure, but they may be able to evolve to do so later in the game. They have survived extinction events over the 500 million years of their history and that’s something many species haven’t.        

Of course I am only guessing and a million factors could tip the balance in favour of this or that species .... still I find the idea that we are not required, and that the solar system will continue without us, rather entertaining .... as I said earlier the Earth, like 'the Dude,' Abides.

 Update 3rd February 2014:

There were reports on the radio and press recently of a prediction of evolution on the move .... Dr Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist from the University of Leicester was quoted as predicting that rats could grow to be the size of sheep (or even bigger). He said that these super adaptable creatures could take advantage of larger animals becoming extinct in the next 100 years, and over a long period of evolutionary time could grow to be 12st+ ( 80kg) - and bigger than a current Capybara.

'Animals will evolve, over time, into whatever designs will enable them to survive and to produce offspring'.

So essentially, by our extermination of other mammals, we already creating evolutionary niches for species to move into.