Well, the bacteria scenario doesn’t meet the terms of the OP, as they couldn’t do any of those things in their current form. Thinking about it though, neither does the ant attack really. Ants may be physically capable of attacking us (ineffectively), but their behaviour is instinctive, the end result of millions of years of evolution. Ants that attack humans would require more genetic tinkering than a mutation that killed off gut flora.
Any of the animal vs humans scenarios require an injection of magic. The question for this thread is, where is the magic allowed? Maybe we should allow modifications of behaviour (within biological limitations, so no hyper-intelligent sheep building an atom bomb) but not bodies.
Any gut bacterium that evolved to penetrate our defenses against them would quickly find itself extinct, before it managed to spread very far at all in the human population. This probably happens from time to time, in fact. So to the extent they can be said to be “trying” to do anything, they’re trying not to harm us.
Assuming the ‘bloodlust’ of the OP is essentially an aggressiveness switch that does not require any modification beyond the aliens hitting them with a scent, chemical, or something else, then Rattus norvegicus, the Brown rat. More aggressive than the black rat, its range is almost co-terminus with humanity, and requiring less technology/adaptation.
Anyone who attempted to escape the initial carnage would have very few places to go, and would almost certainly take the rats with them unknowingly. Iceland and Greenland would be the only places to go.
Expanding the selection to include Rattus rattus, and Iceland becomes gefukt, as well. I don’t know if humanity can survive in Greenland alone.
According to one estimate there are 81 million rats in the UK, compared to a human population of about 60 millions. I’m fairly sure your average UK resident could defeat 1.35 rats in combat.
I disagree with the assessment of the ants. I think you can certainly say that ants are capable of attacking humans, if a human were to fall into an anthill and stay there he would certainly be bitten many times. However, in nature, that rarely happens, and a human falling into an anthill would quickly get away while the ants regroup and try to rebuild. We don’t need magic to imagine that suddenly, ants see us as food, or as a threat, and concentrate their aggression on us exclusively. Just as you can make a bull attack a piece of red cloth where normally they probably wouldn’t, you can imagine that the nature instinct of ants, or whatever creature, is honed in on humans to kill them.
For example, take sharks. They can kill us, but generally sharks avoid people because we aren’t their primary sources of food like seals and stuff, and we probably don’t take very good. You don’t need magic to imagine that sharks develop a sudden hunger for human flesh, attacking all surfers, swimmers, and boats. Normal sharks would do that, but only under certain conditions. This topic imagines if such conditions exist all the time
So if the consensus seems to be bacteria, ants, or rats, I have another scenario for people to ponder.
What 2 types of animals, when teamed up, could do the most damage to humans? You can get creative. Animals of one type could support the weaknesses in animals of another type. Perhaps one big and one small? Or one adapted to the cold and one to heat? Generally, these should be animals that, by themselves, wouldn’t pose enough of a threat to humans, but with the help of another, could possibly harm humanity to a severe degree
I’d like to imagine that birds and spiders could make a scary teamup. By themselves, birds can’t do much damage, and spiders are scary but don’t have much in the way of mobility and poison, only children and elderly are truly suceptible. But imagine birds dropping giant spiders on people’s heads. While it may not destroy humanity, every human who has to go outside will be living in terror of what could drop on their head at any moment. Outdoor malls will be ghost towns. Car moonroofs would be liabilities. Sales of poisonous, spiked helmets will soar through the roof! I wouldn’t want to have a huntsman spider dropped on my head every time I go out.
Viruses. (if you categorise them as animals under to OP)
A mutation of an influenza or common cold virus with it’s capability to spread by respiratory contact with virtually any lethal strain, provided the inculation period before onset of symptom was several days.
I’m trying to keep the discussion biologically plausable, otherwise the question becomes “could supernatural ants defeat humanity”, to which the answer is obviously yes.
Above, I tried to explain a bit about how ants forage for food, by sending out searchers and laying down pheromone trails. This approach would be wholly ineffective for hunting humans, who can simply step away. I seriously doubt an ant has the ability to distinguish between a human and it’s surroundings, from the ant’s perspective we are just a large shape. They could not identify a human across a room and swarm towards them, as some people are imagining. They have not evolved the visual system and brain to do so. As for those scary army/driver ants, they do not even have eyes. Some insects defends against them by simply standing still. The ants swarm around and over them, but cannot perceive them.
Some insects, such as the mosquito, find their prey by homing in on trails of exhaled CO2. Others target specific species by homing in on particular pheremones. The latter is probably the easiest way to give your ants a human seeking ability. However, once they are milling around in the vicinity of humans how exactly do they mount an effective attack?
I’ll repeat my earlier point. Once ants deviate from their normal evolved behaviour, their colonies are going to decline. If they are aggressively pursueing humans instead of prey or food sources they can actually handle, they are damaging their survival prospects. If they are sending out more hunters, their natural predators like birds are going to have a field day.
Blood-sucking insect plus pathogen is a proven tag team. The black death was probably caused by infected fleas hitching a ride on rats. Malaria carrying mosquitos may have killed more people than anything else in history. Maybe someday something like Ebola will evolve to hitch a ride on an insect, I don’t know how likely that is. A combination of a particularly deadly pathogen and a carrier with a large geographical range would be the most deadly combination. In a similar vein, that’s the reason avian flu is a concern, birds can spread the disease over vast geographical areas very quickly. The danger was ridiculously over-hyped by the media, but eventually we will be hit by another massive flu epidemic, it’s just a matter of time.
They’d have to get us on a surprise first strike, or through a ‘suicide bomber’ approach.
Look how many species we’ve wiped out without the least intention, either through invasion of habitat, environmental destruction, introduction of foreign species and over-exploitation. Now imagine if we had a reason to turn all out destructive power to wiping out, say, the ants. We may well destroy ourselves in the process, but if we meant to do it, by God, we’d wipe out the ants!!
So if the cockroaches could talk the ants into ‘taking it for the team’, maybe - otherwise, no. We’re the biggest badasses on the planet, and the sooner we take responsibility for that power and use it for Good, the better.
So I was catching up with some old SD columns today and read this one by Cecil a few weeks ago asking if Australia is the deadliest place on earth
Interesting and informative as always, I nod to myself as I peruse the facts, but then I come to this:
Read that again:
Motherfucking. Flesh. Eating. BEES!
It combines the worst part about bees (the fact that they are bees) with the descriptor “Flesh-eating”! Nothing is good about “flesh-eating”! This isn’t like “meat-eating” where we can all picture an animal with sharp teeth, or a fat guy at a Brazilian Buffet.
No, this is FLESH, as in, what your face is made of. That’s what it eats, your face.
Probably to spare us all the nightmare of having to imagine such a thing exists, neither Cecil nor Una in the article mentioned the specific name of the bees. I googled the phrase “flesh-eating bees” and Google spat back, perhaps in horror, a few links on the first page describing the monster, possibly as a warning to go no further, and none on the name or even a Wiki page
Does anyone know if there are enough of these things to be a threat to humanity? I imagine they are already a threat to anyone living close by, which is why I’ve already marked their terrorities in areas of maps with large suspicious gaps of human civilization.
I’ve read all the responses to the OP, interesting subject that it is, lot of good ideas, but if anything could wipe us out, it would plankton. All kidding aside however, I’d have to agree with this one.
The human race is only a threat to itself, I think someone already clarified that, we are the top of the food chain for a reason. If something ever did try and wipe us out, even flesh eating bacteria, we’d realize it was happening and immediately join together to eliminate said species from the face of the planet with extreme prejudice long before our numbers began to dwindle. In fact, such an occurrence would actually bring humanity closer together and we may, at the same time, annihilate racism and discrimination against each other. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger…it might turn out to be a good thing if this actually ever happened, maybe then people would take pause and re-examine the value of life…maybe.
Wasn’t this partly the scenario in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds? “What if all the birds yadda yadda . . .”
Based on the movie and the story by Daphne DuMaurier, I’d say birds, all the birds could do a fairly good job of creating irreversible chaos to humankind, if not completely subjugating it.
Ever heard of the passenger pigeon? One of the most numerous bird species in the world in the 19th century, with a population in the billions. It was hunted to extinction in a few decades.
. All kidding aside however, I’d have to agree with this one.