Bed bugs.
Positive outcome would be no more having to burn contaminted possessions (or wash them in very hot water many times).
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Asklemmy
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I was going to go with the rabies virus, but bedbugs is a solid choice as well.
Viruses are not animals.
Viruses aren't even alive in the technical biological sense
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Yeah I think any human-specialized parasite is an easy choice. Head lice? Fuck em.
I know you said that we shouldnβt say humans but Iβm gonna say it anyway:
Humans.
Sorry.
Would be interesting to tally up the negative impacts of removing humans as well.
Culls of invasive species would no longer occur, which would be detrimental in those ecosystems.
A fairly significant number of endangered animals probably only exist today due to human intervention and breeding programs (i am well aware that we probably made them endangered in the first place)
Cross breeds would be done as well, Ligers and Mules require humans for breeding. Although in fairness they are definitely not natural to begin with.
Many animals we have domesticated would be done for as well, most smaller dogs are completely, reliant on humans for food and grooming. Many cats would be okay, but some breeds are likely dead ends as well. Jersey cows would probably have a bad time as well, without milking, sheep might have issues as well?
Interesting thought experiment.
Yeah, this is a good topic. I can add a few:
~~Short term, pets in houses, farm animals, etc will need to escape and start fending for themselves otherwise they'll starve (or dehydrate).~~. Oops, I'd somehow missed an entire paragraph of your post π€¦ββοΈ Sheep need us to trim their wool, because we've bred them up grow fair more than they need. They'll get too hot if they don't have problems with defecation first (an actual thing farmers have to worry about).
Medium to long term, when dams and dikes aren't maintained they'll eventually fail, flooding vast areas including the Netherlands.
I guess that the world will continue heating for a bit even once we're gone, so we wouldn't be around to theoretically use our tech to help. Obviously, we're the reason it's happening in the first place, but nature's not equipped to deal with change that's this rapid.
Yes, most of those we created through breeding, but you could argue that wolves and coyotes created modern deer the same way.
I do wonder if many would go extinct in the medium term from predation, before they can evolve fast enough to adapt; I'm thinking farm pigs and chickens would be OK in the short term - they don't need us to survive - but wild dogs/coyotes/wolves, large cats like the NA lions, raptors, foxes... they'd all be putting a lot of pressure on those mostly defenseless breeds. Pigs are not wild hogs. Cattle and horses exist just fine in their environments without humans. Even with predation, herds are large and they aren't defenseless.
Sheep are an exception; like you said, they need us to perform maintenance because of how we've bred them. Are there others?
My thoughts go to a lot of our stored and operational fuel supplies. Nuclear fuel (both civil and weapon) would eventually become exposed through lack of storage container maintinance and cooling starting meltdown reactions in their localized environments. Oil extraction, distribution, and refining systems are automated to an extent but somewhere a tank is going ng to rupture or just run out of space and then it's all getting into the environment, likely at sea to have what effects that may cause.
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Humans are the only species that would ask a question like this with ecologically damning effects. So, yeah.
Humans are not the problem. Ultrarich people are.
Oh come on, really? Is the problem ultrarich people? Or is the problem poor people who won't eat those ultrarich people?
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Canadian Geese, the animal that Canada stored all its rage inside and sent to battle the United States
I hate to say it, but getting rid of mosquitos would probably have bigger consequences than that. The females are the only ones sucking blood, the males on the other hand help pollinate plants, exterminating them could potentially affect our food production lines...
... But not gonna lie I'd still genocide the fuckers, ecological damage be damned.
You don't need to eliminate all mosquitos, just the ones that bite people.
There are dozens of different species of mosquitos, and not all of them bite people. If you get rid of the ones that bite people the others will likely still fill in as pollinators for those that are no longer competing with them.
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Only the females of a tiny fraction of species, and only when they need to produce eggs, stuck blood.
Pandas. I mean, they really don't seem like they want to exist in the first place. And China get's to finally shut up about them.
they really donβt seem like they want to exist
Alternatively, they're at peace and content with their existence. At least that's what it seems like to me, goals really
but they cute though
Cockroaches... as far as I'm aware, they don't contribute anything to the eco system, they're just pests.
Unfortunatelly, not even a nuclear war can erradicate them π.
'Cockroach' encompasses a wide range of species, the majority of which have no interest in living in a human's home, and contribute to the work of decomposition on the forest floor. Many smaller predators also eat them.
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Mosquitoes
If you gave any random person god like powers to do whatever they wanted, they would immediately eradicate mosquitoes as their first act.
Mosquitoes are pollinators. Sucking blood and being annoying is only a small part of their functionality.
The bats would miss them.
Any change to the biodiversity on our planet will have a negative effect. What is a pest to you is food for another species, or a pollinator, or any of dozens of valuable purposes.
Humanity OFC-- oh you said not to say humans... Shit.
How nice would that be if humanity stopped existing...
Hard to say. Mosquitos, is probably not one of them because even as much as we hate them, many animals prey on them, so unless other insect replaces them as a food source for those animals, them disappearing would probably affect many other species and subsequently, other species that may feed or depend in some form on those that feed on mosquitos.
My answer would probably be ticks, since I don't think there's many animals that feed on them and their only usefulness is population control, which should be doable by other species either way.
Edit: bed bugs as well, since it was mentioned by other commenters, I hate those fuckers and last I checked they weren't any animal's primary food source.
I remember reading some scientic article that examined what would happen if we eradicated the mosquitos entirely.
Surprisingly, they came to the conclusion that they'd just be gone and we would be a lot happier without the nuisance and the diseases they spread.
No other species is dependent on mosquitos as a food source, they could easily find enough to eat with them gone. Mosquitos apparently serve no known vital purpose in their ecosystems, although it was mentioned that males of some species have some little value as secondary pollinators.
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Ticks and botflies. We don't need maggots making a home in our skin. Even worse is what they do to animals like sheep.
Mosquitos are mainly an annoyance to me and I can deal with them.
Maggots are the things that breakdown dead stuff, without them you'd have dead animals and plants rotting on the ground for ages while the bacteria breaks them down slowly. I think the whole world would smell worse.
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Mosquitos. Also bedbugs. Any insect that feeds on blood really
None. And weβre hurting badly from the ones that have already been removed.
Same for me, mosquitoes. Those pesky little buggers!
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