Which animal will replace humans as Earth's dominant species? This scientist has an idea
Human beings have been at the center of ecological change on Earth for thousands of years. But as history shows, no species lasts forever.
His answer is the octopus. What say you?
Yeah but we literally are changing the planet and affecting other species. We've developed nukes that could take out the whole world
We are in no way special when it comes to impacting other species or the Earth as a system.
We do it on purpose, with intent. Heck, we do it for multiple reasons! We also massively impact all parts of the ecosystem at the same time.
purpose, with intent
allegedly.
Because it opens up doing so many different things that impact the world as a whole. Beavers instinctually damn moving water and build homes, but that has been their limited behavior for thousands of years. They don't expand out and change things even more and more over time like humans do, because they don't actively choose to do new things that continuously expand their impact.
That intent and conscious decision making by humans to change the world around them is what makes them special.
Now explain why somehow our most important trait makes us dominant from a biological point of view.
It allows us to accomplish far more than would normally occur based on our biological limitations.
Your problem is trying to argue based on an academic definition (that is not universally defined) against the common usage of the word dominant and doing a piss poor job of making that clear. Like when someone uses the lay version of theory and then arguing against it based on the scientific definition of theory without making it clear which one you are using.
You could read the article for their definition of dominant and use it like the rest of us are.
Sure, if my goal was to entertain their proposed definition.
My goal was instead commenting that this might be a fun endeavor for some, but remind everybody else that might not be familiar with biological sciences that this isn't actually a formal definition or a scientific claim that one species is or isn't dominant.
If the beavers banded together and tried to exterminate humanity, they wouldn’t get as far as humanity would exterminating beaverkind. That’s domination: exerting your will on those around you to their detriment and not being deterred by their resistance, no?
I don’t think that’s a fun competition or nice thing to consider, but there are few animals that could come close to beating us in that regard. Ants, termites, and bees are the first that come to mind for me, but there are probably other possibilities.
Plants, fungi, and bacteria on the other hand… I don’t think we could really expect to win against the most ubiquitous examples of those.
True but we're one species. This is comparing one species to all the bacteria
I think you should chill out bc this was supposed to be a fun discussion, but I'll give you the same energy back. The fact that you brought up viruses, which aren't even living organisms, into a debate regarding species tells me all I need to know about your so-called expertise. We can agree to disagree, that way you can save your arrogance for someone who's impressed. :)
*This is MelonYellow. My server went down with fantastic timing!
