Fri 7 Dec 2007
Which animal species, if suddenly given human-like intelligence, would be most
successful at knocking us off the food chain and taking our place as the
planet’s dominant species?
(Suggested by Terminal Verbosity.)
Posted by Josh Millard32 answers so far!
Something small, maybe killer bees or mosquitoes. Our current weapons would be ineffective against them during the Great War.
Either mice or roaches. We can’t keep them out of our houses now; what’s it going to be like when they’re as smart as we are?
That brings up a good point: the question says “animal”, but is there any reason we should discount insects and arachnids and so on? I’d be interested in argument re: plausible brain capacity and the limitations of (and solutions to) said angle.
Cockroaches. They’d all rise at once from their hiding places under the sink and behind the radiator and destroy us. They’d be able to attack and destroy our cities first and follow us in the the rural areas where they’d have the advantage of cover and numbers. There wouldn’t be a rolled up newspaper big enough to keep us on top of the food chain.
On lack of preview - Any of the social insects would destroy us if they gained intelligence. I mean, they construct entire cities of their own and we can barely agree on pizza toppings.
I only know the biggest threat to our cars and tops of heads would be birds.
I would also think that the insects would destroy us. There aren’t enough of almost any large mammal species to pose any real threat. Maybe cows, but they would mostly cause a lot of havoc in the US interior, but would eventually be put down. I would pick ant specifically because of there already well demonstrated ability to work together and organize; I feel the roaches’ avarice and jealousy would tear their fledgling super society apart. Plus ants not only out number humans, they out weigh us globally. My childhood nightmares of walking humanoid ant colonies will come to pass.
Y’all are dumb. What the fuck is an intelligent bug gonna do to me? I’d stomp their ass. Then how smart would they be? Smarts are only good for one thing: building tools. Without thumbs, you can’t build or operate tools, and so you can’t do shit. “Hello there. I’m an intelligent bear with sharp claws and teeth.” *bang* Now you’re a rug motherfucker. Y’all are a bunch of pussies. Scared of intelligent mice. You’re a human being dammit. Grow a spine.
I think raccoons would be excellent at guerilla warfare. They are extremely adaptable, eat anything, thrive in most climates, and have some sort of manual dexterity. Plus they are nocturnal so they could steal a cache of grenades and lob them at us while we’re sleeping. After all the terror, combined with sleep deprivation, we would gladly become their servants and hand over our choicest crops to them and let them nest wherever they wanted. Garbagemen would have elevated status and leftovers would become the new currency.
Aren’t we already working for the kittehs? We slave and slave just to bring them home the designer cat food, the good catnip drugs, the designer toys. We rush them to the vet at the first sign of a sneeze, and stand by powerless as they pretty much do whatever they want to our homes. We clean up their poop, study their insanely picky preferences, never ask them to do a lick of work - and we feel ridiculously grateful if they ever sit in our laps and purr for a few minutes.
Why would they even deign to acquire lower intelligence such as ours? (And they did all this without thumbs, because, hey - if your slaves have thumbs, why do you need ‘em?)
Wake up, pod people, and observe the Felinarchy! You are mere constructs in Fluffyland.
Oh, ND¢ I Fear for people like you during the great ant-pocalypse; vainly firing your hunting rifle into a giant machete wielding walking colony 500,000 ants strong.
I could single-handedly destroy an army of 500,000 ants using nothing more than a radiation suit and my size elevens. If there is one thing that man has proven himself adept at it is killing animals. Go ahead and make them smart. They just don’t scare me.
Y’all are dumb.
Bees could probably take out quite a few humans until we could organize some kind of insecticide counter-attack. Assuming a roving drove of bees could sweep human civilization going on a sting-kill spree, I bet they could take out half the population. If they figure out how to use door knobs.
How do you know this hasn’t already happened, and they’ve just fooled us into thinking otherwise?
The octopus. There’s no point being smart if you can’t manipulate things to build lasers. And while the opposable thumb is pretty nifty, having eight flexible arms covered in suckers has to win.
Who’s to say different species won’t band together, a la Animal Farm? A pig, a racoon, a dog, and a duck would be LETHAL.
I agree with the social-insect theory. My nightmare is that the ants will suddenly begin to think with one tremendous Over-mind, and begin to obliterate every human-made object in this universe. They march on cities and towns, relentlessly multiplying and feasting on our corpses, and we are powerless to stop them. They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be stopped. They are experts in warfare, and homo sapiens is reduced to a few minor colonies, huddled in hermetically-sealed secret locations, consumed by paranoia.
In the end, the ants are only held in check by the bees, who have used their own Over-mind for good, rather than evil, and have worked with rebel male ants to infiltrate the drone ranks and overthrow the Queen. Using their wings and stingers, they successfully manage to stop the March Of The Ants.
In the new world order, the world will be divided in half, the product of an uneasy truce between the Ants and the Bees. Remaining humans will be nonexistent in the Ant empire, but will enjoy moderately pleasant lives in the Bee empire, where 99.9% of the human population will be devoted to horticulturalism.
Here’s the question, though, iamkimiam: what would motivate them to band together and kill all humans, rather than coming into it as a many-sided interspecies melee? What have sparrows ever done for bears, after all?
Some loose alliances, sure. Probably some major predator groups would organize to try to avoid a competitive slaughter that’d destroy the food supply; likewise prey collectives trying to keep things in check and back each other’s defenses. But when push comes to shove, they’re all a bunch of animals.
Cats of course. They’ve been planning world domination for years. It won’t be long now.
Hyperintelligent octopi would be terrifying…. if you lived underwater. Otherwise, not so much. And we’ve culled all the top predators down to an unthreatening population. So it seems to me that insects would be the only real threat. And even then ND¢ makes a great point: after the initial surge, once the bugs lose the element of surprise they’re done for. Hmmm.
Are we counting viruses as living organisms? Bacteria?
How about bacteria? Can it be a microscopic animal? They are about to kick our ass as it is. MRSA anyone?
I’m not feeling the bugs. An orchestrated, intelligent attack would look like what? French Fry’s machete-wielding bug-blob, while enjoyable to imagine, could be dispatched with a garden hose. A mass of hissing cockroaches covering my body would squick the shit out of me, but not much more. How could they kill me in that instance? If they’re lucky, topple me down the stairs but that’s about it. The only advantage they have is numbers. A case could be made for poisonous arachnids (black widow, brown recluse, scorpion, etc.); they could easily take us out one by one with stealth. But how quickly can one spider reproduce its venom? How efficiently could they kill?
And there’s one important thing to remember. With advanced intelligence comes self-awareness. And the instinct of self-preservation. Are thirty-thousand ants really going to try and push me out the window knowing there’s an excellent chance I’ll stomp most of them into the carpet before they even get close enough? Making the case for hyper-intelligent insect who are also religious fundamentalists is just too far of a stretch.
Plus there’s the point
cortexJosh brought up: brain size. Could an insect ever conceivably house enough neural pathways to attain intelligence?The answer is going to be a bird: eagle, hawk, buzzard, egret. A lot of these are endangered, so my pick is going to be the biggest bird of prey with the largest total population (I have no idea what that is). Most birds are very dexterous with their beaks and talons—no thumb required. Take their nest-building, for example, or the burglarizing/stockpiling antics of magpies. The advantage that intelligence gives us is tool-building and usage. Physically, we’re in no position to be Earth’s kings. So, given their inherent dexterity and new-found intelligence, I’d say it’s only a matter of time before intelligent birds start designing weapons. I’d imagine some sort of slingshot they grip with both talons and pull back on the ammunition with their beaks. Or they can scavenge for the parts for pipe bombs. In the short term, they can steal existing weapons like grenades as Marie Mon Dieu postulated. They’re small, fast, have great eyesight, are already equipped for communication, and can escape to places we cannot follow. Depending on their beginning population, I’d give us 5-20 years until extinction.
That or bears. They are fucking huge.
Beavers.
Some of you are along the right path, but not thinking it through. If ants discovered fire, how long do you think they’d allow human houses to exist? We burn up their nest already. If the bees spread themselves out enough and hid their queens much better, we’d find ourselves unable to kill them all. When they carried out strategic swarm attacks, killing leaders and their attackers without care for their individual selves, how well could we do against them? You have to shit sometime, so that protective suit isn’t going to help you.
Now here’s the big scary thing: what happens when the bees, hornets, wasps, ants, spiders cockroaches and related insects all gain intelligence? Will they plot together against the huge human infestation or fight amongst themselves for supremacy?
Slime mold. That stuff can already move, plot and exude evil. Just eat me first, oh gelatinous overlords!
Not bees, not beavers. Beeves. Motive, numbers, size.
NDcent, you’re forgetting two things: tunneling, and sleep. If ants get intelligent, I certainly doubt they’d be going for regular ole frontal assault. After all, a stockpile of Raid would take care of them. But they can tunnel, and chew holes in things like insulation, walls, floors, and the like. And we have to sleep. I’m guessing they’d use guerrilla tactics, building colonies underneath houses (thus no tell-tale ant mounds), and digging a few holes through the floorboards of houses. Then, when the people inside succumb to eventual sleep, millions of ants swarm out all over the sleeping humans, biting them to death. Then they all retreat back underground, to go dig under another house. Rinse and repeat.
What octopi? A few oil spills and we’ve got them crushed (that sucks though).
you guys watch too many bad sci-fi flicks - why would a suddenly hyper intelligent animal destroy us and our works when they could enslave us instead? - there’s a civilization, a big infrastructure, and lots of skilled people to run it
all super intelligent ants would need to do would be to figure out a way to burrow about 50 of them into our brains or around our hearts - those who do what they say, will just be carrying some hitchhikers around - those who don’t, get holes bitten in their brains or hearts and die
it would be even simpler for super intelligent bees - they could genetically engineer themselves to sting with cobra venom - and then there would always be a few hovering over us, making sure we did their bidding or else - in time, they could even selectively breed us to become more docile and obedient
so my vote’s for bees
ND¢ is right: we have been at the top of the food chain for more than 100 000 years and we have already eliminated all potential threats, including the most likely candidates, Neanderthals. There are no threats in the animal kingdom on the foreseeable horizon.
We already are the best our planet has been able to produce/host during its billions years history.
If the human species was somehow erased from the planet, it would take around a million years for a new species to evolve to occupy our ecological niche.
It would have to be air-breathing, a mammal, omnivore, bipedal, have opposable thumb…
It looks like the only real threat would have to come from outer space.
Everybody’s assuming that the moment animals are as intelligent as humans they also gain the same knowledge and motivations as us.
Who’s to say that a hyperintelligent cockroach wouldn’t still prefer to rut all day in a bin of mouldering apples? He’s got no worries in life and lots of cockroach pleasures.
Piranha, on the other hand, are scary enough without the ability to scheme.
Scale is a problem for the insects–we’re a lot more mobile than they are. Here’s what I mean. I imagine that it would take a city block’s worth of ants to kill me if I were awake. They could get me in their sleep with fewer, but ants are slow, and they couldn’t kill more than one house’s worth when you start thinking about supply issues: soldiers have to eat, so they’d need a lot of support ants to get them food, just like any army. Flying insects are faster, but are less numerous, so the numbers/supply problem remains for them. If, worldwide, insects attack piecemeal, we’d figure out what they were doing long before they were able to take enough of us down. We might have to become permanent nomads, but human beings who were aware of the insect threat would be quite hard to kill. They might try a scorched earth policy of eating all the food, but I’m not confident that it would succeed.
The insects would have to act in coordination to take down our sophisticated transportation and communications networks, to keep us dumb and immobile until it was too late. To attribute such a level of coordination to them, I submit, gives them intelligence and communication powers far beyond our own.
If they played dumb and acted as they usually do, they could wait until they solve these problems before striking. I’m not confident that they’d be completely solved–there’d always be some fuckup ants who forgot to chew through the translantic cable, or some charismatic bee who is sick and tired of listening to the head bee drone on and on and spies for the humans, or something. But that assumes that they could play dumb in the first place–what happens when they first become sentient? They don’t have any communication networks set up, they’re scattered around the world, they have no leaders. They’d divide into factions and have their own squabbles, just like humans and every other animal. The takeaway: the level of coordination required is implausible.
I like the birds of prey pick.