Dawn Of The Planet Of The..........?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Premises:

  1. All of Mankind has left this planet. A couple of hundred thousand years or so from now what will be the dominant species on Earth?
  2. All of Mankind has left the planet, but one species will be given a treatment that will raise its intelligence to roughly that of the common human. What species would you give that treatment?
2
  1. No species will be ‘dominant’ in a couple of hundred thousand years, at least not in the way humans are – that’s just not long enough. Ants will do very well… (ants always do very well). Without humans, most domestic animals will go extinct (though their wild relatives will probably survive).

If it were long enough (a few million years, perhaps), I don’t think anything meaningful can be predicted.

  1. Ravens. Super-smart, adaptable birds that can talk would be cool.
3

  1. If we are just ‘disappeared,’ I would think that insects or a virus will be next.

  2. If I were the one getting to chose what gets the boost I would like to see the gentle giant Gorillas get it.

4

You’d help those damn, dirty apes? Get your stinkin’ paws off of this thread!

5

  1. Macaques, maybe? There aren’t many of them, sure, but human populations were probably down to a couple thousand at one point. They’re fairly protected and smart and social.

  2. Elephants. It’d be fun to give it to a smart species that ‘deserves’ it, like grey parrots or porpoises or something, but I think they’d just get depressed having the intelligence but not useful limbs. Octopuses would be fun, because they can manipulate stuff, but they’re too short-lived. So elephants. See what they could do with those sweet trunks. I’d love to see elephant technology - architecture, writing, military weaponry…

6

  1. Raccoons. They would be hotwiring cars already if they ever figured out how to reach the gas pedal with their stumpy little legs.

  2. Architeuthis, but only if they promise to name their giant undersea stone city “R’leyh.”

7

Corgis. In both scenarios. A planet run by corgis would be too cute for words.

8
  1. With no cars to run them over, I think raccoons would get pretty far, but
  2. If I could choose to make one species as smart as humans I’d have to pick cats.
9

  1. Coyotes

  2. Coyotes

10

  1. I’d vote for cats, of the larger varieties. The mountain lions would make a comeback in the Americas and become the main predatory species, the usual lions & tigers elsewhere as well. Canines probably wouldn’t do as well based off a previous thread of “what happens to dogs if humans vanish?” The general consensus was they’d homogenize into medium sized, skinny yellow dogs such as dingoes and coyotes.

  2. Raccoons. Closest we’ve got to another species with workable hands, although the idea of giving cats that level of intelligence combined with being the main predatory species might be kind of cool. We could create the Kzin!

11

Sleestaks.

12

I don’t got no paws. I has hands just like raccoons does. And I’m big nuff to box your ears & teach manners & stuff. Looks like I might be busy doin that. Ya think? Bawahahahah

And get off my grass. No, not that kind. ::: sheesh :::: :stuck_out_tongue:

13

How about bears? They’re effective predators, smart, omnivorous, and dexterous. Plus, they’ve already startedusing tools.

14

There are no species that come close to the intelligence of humans. Not in a few hundred thousand years and perhaps not in a million years. We have built spaceships and traveled to the moon. You think orangutans or rats are going to accomplish such a feat?

If humans are eradicated then there will be no order. Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing.

15

I’m curious what the dominant plant eaters would be. Cows? Or did we breed them too stupid to survive in the wild? Or they need too much care they couldn’t get without humans (diet, milking). Horses, maybe? Farmers already have cow herds together but they don’t generally keep giant herds of horses, do they? Or maybe deer would just explode everywhere and radiate into all sorts of available niches. Or maybe bison take over NA again?

Pigs are smart. Maybe for revenge they could domesticate apes and make tasty baboon bacon.

16
  1. Wombats
  2. Wombats
17

  1. Once they invent hydrosuits (with lasers), sharks.

  2. Dogs. So that “man’s best friend” could literally become man’s best friend. And clean up their own damn shit.

18

So, did we just vanish? Or did we screw everything up, take all the resources with us, destroy the ecosystem, and THEN vamoose?

I can’t even begin to guess what would be most “advanced” naturally speaking - too little time in your example to really do much, and by the time there’s enough evolution, it’s too complex to make a guess. Some sort of insect hivemind would probably do ok. Otherwise, judging by history, little scrawny omnivorous scavenger mammals would likely be fairly well off.
If we uplifted something? If we didn’t screw up the ecosystem too much more before we left, dolphins and orcas are pretty damn hot intellectually, are cooperative and communal, and they’ve got a lot of territory and manage it pretty well without infrastructure.

If we DID screw things over, then I agree that raccoons are a pretty good choice - see the above thoughts on smallish scavenger mammals. Either that or we breed Hemingway cats into dominance. I don’t think birds are going to work well, but that might just be my ignorance about birds.

19

We left the planet to go elsewhere, and left pretty much everything else behind.

20

We’re leaving the planet-the newly intelligenced species is staying here.