If humans were to disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow (whether we all commit suicide at once, or maybe the rapture happens and we’re all somehow included, I’ll leave up to your imagination), what other species would go extinct as a direct consequence?
Also, what species might benefit the most as a consequence?
I’m thinking city dwelling pigeons wouldn’t fare too well. I’m sure any parasites that are specific to humans would be gone pretty quickly. Would chickens be able to survive without us? Or cows?
Wolves would probably make a comeback.
I’m sure you fine folks have some interesting opinions on the matter though…
Extinct is a pretty big deal. Any number of scenarios could play out - no doubt the lions from the zoos would have a field day with all those cows dying in agony from not being milked. Cows come in many varieties though and some would take a lion on without breaking sweat.
Some species only exist because we have supported them - pandas are an obvious one.
Chickens and other livestock would be first to go, most likely. My guess is dogs would have a tough time of it at first, but since there’s so many of them, and tons of unguarded livestock, they’d probably be pretty successful after a while.
All domesticated animals are considered to be the same species as the wild version they were derived from. Other than cows (no more Aurochs around), I think most domesticated animals have wild cousins.
There are certain lice that have evolved to live on humans, IIRC, so they would have a tough time adapting. California Condors wouldn’t be around much longer. Wolves and coyotes would interbreed with domesticated dogs, and that might change them into something different from wolves and coyotes.
I’m going to guess that humans would go extinct if humans went extinct. Sort of a tautology.
I also would guess that certain scavenger populations would bloom for a while, eating our carcasses and feasting from our fridges and cupboards. And then they would overpopulate and die off.
I have no factual answer because we haven’t already died yet. Except the zombies… they might know something we don’t.
California Condors are one that would be interesting to watch- could they continue to survive without a regular influx of human produced chicks. Especially as tehy are still all descended from 22 original birds (Cheetah style!).
For animals larger than a flea it’s probably going to be a species near extinction already. Even the microbes and parasites may survive by finding a home in the scavengers that are eating all the dead bodies.
The Spix Macaw. I would have to believe a couple of other parrot species wouldn’t make it, either.
Corn would likely not persist unless some messy feeder would rip through the husks to allow seeding to occur. I would suspect that many fruit and vegetable cultivars would fail, also.
Thriving? Crows and various predatory birds, especially at first, as well as other scavengers. Squirrels. Fructivorous birds. Meadowlarks and similar birds. Mice and voles. Deer, until the domestic animals run out.
Feral chickens do just fine in Hawaii. Chickens elsewhere might fall victim to predation, but there would certainly be some pockets without enough predators to drive them to complete extinction.
A lot of this can be (and has been) answered factually. Some of this requires speculation and opinion though, and since the OP did ask for opinions, let’s move this to our opinion forum.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Domestic animals would mostly do fine, as long as they were not confined and were able to run free. Some of the more specialized breeds would die out, of course, but around the world domestic stock has gone feral and given rise to free living herds (e.g. “wild” horses in the American west). Chickens have established free-living populations several places in the tropics. With less food provided by humans, the populations of city-dwelling pigeons would go down, but they would survive just fine.