Because we are significantly less ignorant than Bronze-Age herdsmen.
We should bring chimpanzees and dolphins. We should have a back-up plan in case we don’t make it.
Skald, O Evil Overlord, I need details. If this is an alternate Earth where 10,000 humans didn’t survive, did most other species survive? What about plants? Micro-flora and fauna? Marine species?
We need pollinators (such as bees and hummingbirds), bacteria that aid most other species in digestion, soil-chewers (like dung beetles and earthworms) and various fungi. But if this is truly an alternate Earth with a fiercer Toba, most of these species or their ecological equivalents already exist. Probably a lot of pests, like mosquitoes and leeches already exist too. A pity, that; I can’t see that mosquitoes contribute much to the general well-being of the planetary eco-system.
We’ll want our domestic animals (dogs, cats, cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and pigs), because we really don’t want to go through the hassle of re-domesticating their alt-Earth analogs. But beyond that, alt-Earth will have developed its own eco-system, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea to introduce new species to it. Look at what rabbits have done to Australia. I would very much miss elephants, penguins, and pandas, but this alt-Earth will have its own versions of these animals.
I don’t have my evil overlord hat on, dearest. If it were I’d just be evacuating myself and the Seventeen.
My thought here is that, on the alternate Earth, humanity went extinct after Toba for other reasons. Wikipedia says that there may have been as few as 1000 breeding pairs left; it’s not hard to imagine that there might have been a period when they could easily have perished. F’nstance, if they were all in a fairly small area, a bad flu strain might have depressed their numbers even further.
That doesn’t mean that other animals – dogs, elephants, auroches, horses, etc – wouldn’t have suprised. I imagine there’d be plenty of passengers pigeons would be around in North America, for instance.
Pretty much everything that has been domesticated to some degree.
Add frozen embryos and and tissue samples from everything we can take a scalpel to. We will eventually perfect artificial wombs and cloning techniques to bring anything out of storage that we later determine to be beneficial.
Except chihuahuas. Nasty little buggers. I’m betting we will find ancient manuscripts revealing that they began existence as Loki’s dingleberries.
What?
I take it you mean we should have a backup plan for ensuring the existence of a sapeint species on Earth. Why?
A world without voles is not a world worth living in.
If that’s the case, I wouldn’t bring anything. It would be too disruptive.
Now, if we found another alt-Earth that had just never developed animal life, I’d bring everything along, and let every endangered species have another shot at it. Then I’d make humanity leave them the hell alone.
Meh. We’re large predators, pretty far up the food chain; I would not expect a pre-agricultural humanity to be unusually hardy in surviving a global (or local-to-where-humans-are) disaster. I’d certainly expect rodents and other small mammals to outlive us.
Wombats, definitely.
I wouldn’t bet on that - it was seven pairs of the “clean” animals and one pair of the “unclean.”
I think the animals should leave the damn humans behind.
But then, I was just re-reading “Lovelock” by OSC and was reminded of how much people suck sometimes.
Your point being?
Mosquitoes.
I think I would pick chickens for meat and eggs, goats for meat and milk, donkeys or an extremely hardy breed of horse for meat, milk, and beasts of burden, and dogs for working animals. Bees would be important too, if we are bringing our own crops.
Smew
You seem to be specifically leaving out cattle. Why?
I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I was told by a thunderous voice recently to start building a spaceship and gather two of all animals, one male and one female. It might take a while, though. I’ve spent this whole week trying to catch a couple of squirrels. Those suckers run fast. Also, gender assessment is less than straightforward.
So, I hope that catastrophe isn’t all that, you know, imminent. By the way, have any of you guys got a polar bear trap that you aren’t using?
Sild
Cattle are inefficient as a meat source. See here: Home | Cornell Chronicle
I wanted to pick rabbits because they are very efficient meat sources, but it’s bad to introduce them somewhere new.
I really want to pick horses over donkeys, because they are much nicer for transportation, but they’re a little delicate inside and out, where donkeys are much hardier.
I picked animals that the primitive cultures on Earth keep, as they’d probably be best suited for our reboot.