# Us versus other mammals **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 14, 2023, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-versus-other-mammals/979784 "2023-02-14T18:28:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2023, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-versus-other-mammals/979784/81 "2023-02-22T19:20:46Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Humans might have gone extinct. But any way things had played out, orcas or wolves would not be making mobile phones and launching the James Webb telescope. Brings up an interesting though experiment for another thread: if humans were wiped out during one of our early population bottlenecks, what animal would be the apex species on earth today? > [@Tibby](#): > > By the same token, we may be too smart for our own good. Compared to many other top predators since the dawn of time, we haven’t ruled very long. At the rate we’re going, we could easily make our species go extinct (maybe all advanced civilizations do and that’s the answer to the Fermi paradox). When the Martians come along, we’ll make great pets. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2023, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-versus-other-mammals/979784/82 "2023-02-22T19:33:43Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > Brings up an interesting though experiment for another thread: if humans were wiped out during one of our early population bottlenecks, what animal would be the apex species on earth today? Domestic cats. Maybe not today, but soon. They have the numbers, the intellectual potential, and the bad-ass attitude. They just need to grow a little larger. Actually, domestic cats are only semi-domesticated. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2023, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-versus-other-mammals/979784/83 "2023-02-22T19:42:20Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > Brings up an interesting though experiment for another thread: if humans were wiped out during one of our early population bottlenecks, what animal would be the apex species on earth today? I guess there are different short term and long term questions here. In the short term, without too much evolutionary change? But then what do you mean by “apex species”? The apex _predator_ is never numerous. By number of organisms or by biomass you are usually going down the food chain unless you have a species as comprehensively dominant as humans. In the longer term, what species could evolve to come to dominate the Earth like humans have done? Obviously species like chimps could fairly quickly evolve into something virtually identical to humans, but that’s not very interesting. Maybe raccoons? They are cooperative, seem to have opportunistic flexible intelligence, manual dexterity. Octopuses have the intelligence and dexterity, but they are not cooperative. Didn’t we have a thread about this recently? Maybe it was another thread that drifted into this area, because I can’t find it easily. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2023, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-versus-other-mammals/979784/84 "2023-02-23T08:22:53Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Didn’t we have a thread about this recently? Maybe it was another thread that drifted into this area, because I can’t find it easily. I’m pretty sure it was thread drift. Possibly from one of the “Extinction-level event” or similar threads? Or the “how long would human engineering survive if we all vanished” threads. Or wait, there was [this one](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-everyone-was-an-animal-could-society-still-function/977514), I think that’s the one you’re recalling. No drift, as such, but the OP was a bit different in phrasing. And [this one](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-question-about-evolution/965817/51) last year did drift there [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-versus-other-mammals/979784.md?page=4)