Spec evo short : Domesticated animals in a post-human world

Speculative evolution is filled with endless ideas about what becomes of wild animals without people. But what about domestic ones? Making up over 90% of class biomass, let's look into how the most numerous mammals on the planet fare.

[hsdinoman]

“Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.”
― Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

[ojrejut]

Interesting analysis, I can imagine aliens landing on earth and seeing a big ass feral dog hunting a feral cow.

Cats in Australia: Alright guys lets get 3 times bigger, immune to venom and venomous and kill everything.

[nickgushard]

My chadly army of Madagascar hissing roaches will solo

[terriblyclawed]

Feral chickens do pretty well for themselves. I could see them stretching themselves out in a post-human world into opportunistic omnivory, eating whatever they can get their mouths around. I can see a post-human world where large feral chickens are frequent predators of feral dog and cat litters, snatching young and escaping to low tree limbs. I would not put it past feral chickens to evolve themselves into short, stout secretary birds without humans to keep them under control.

[xemiii]

Honestly my biggest takeaway isn't about spec evo but instead how much we've warped the biosphere. I've heard about the whole "almost all animal biomass is humans and domesticated animals, " but man that combined with how much we've stripped the remaining wilds makes me wonder just how weird a world invaded by our pets and livestock would be. Crazier still is how this is one of the less pressing problems we've created for ourselves regarding the future habitability of our planet.

edit: apparently the entire biosphere isn't mostly humans and domesticates, that's just true for mammals

[jinxtheunluckypony]

Cats wouldn’t be as dominant as they are now but I’m confident cats would survive any apocalypse that didn’t render the world uninhabitable. Feeding off of rodents is just too good of an advantage for them to die off, even with the threat of new predation.

[SplotchTG]

Another great example of stray dogs bordering on speciation is the breed of dogs in North America called Carolina Dogs. They’re regarded as a “visual stepping stone” as to how stray dogs in Australia eventually evolved into dingos, and they themselves have a very dingo like appearance, however they’re still a “domestic dog”.

[skeepodoop]

In an All Tommorows fan species challenge, I speculated that a lot of herbivorous humans on feral worlds would be inevitably outcompeted by the livestock also present on those worlds pre-Qu invasion. Considering most of the animal Biomass on our world is purely livestock that is well adapted to grazing, it's weird to think they wouldn't take over any abandoned planets the Star People would terraform, once evolution got to do its thing.

[lackinganame]

If Red dwarf taught us anything it's that cats will evolve into a finely dressed chap looking good over there and over here.

[thenerdbeast]

Glad to see I am vindicated in the statement that Dingoes would take care of invasive cats and foxes with relative ease if they weren't so suppressed in Australia.

We actually already have strong evidence of "super cats" in Australia, with cats as large or larger than foxes being taken often by hunters and notably these "wallaby killers" as they are called have been known to prey on normal domestic cats when they find them which has HUGE implications for speciation because cannibalism among cats is a lot rarer than cannibalism among dogs. To actively view other healthy adult cats as prey goes to show they are on the fast track to becoming their own species.

The reason why this isn't given much scientific study likely has to do with why Dingoes aren't often respected in scientific study; it is hard to convince authoritative powers that they are their own thing and not just "nuisance strays" which infuriatingly is still a common conception Australians often have for dingoes despite how much evidence there is.

[migueljose]

Honestly i've lost count of the amount of times I discussed with some of my relatives about the impact of feral animals on ecosystems normally ending with a: "But they are just x innocent animal they couldn't done all that" even when I showed the proof of their impact. It's tiring sometimes

[gabrielsmedleysanimaltime]

If you want to use cattle for a future life spec-evo project, look no further than the Texas Longhorn for a real-life example. That animal wasn't made by man, but was created by mother nature.

[NitroIndigo]

"All mammal families have small origins" sounds like an inspirational quite.

[paulv]

Great video. And never, ever, ask a spec author what made its humans go extinct

[speculativewildlife]

Humans: die
Domestic animals: mad max time, everyone

[zenebean]

Really appreciate how you go into our current relations with feral animals. The charisma of horses and cats tends to go poorly for native species

[Girjon]

I just know one thing. All of the domestic reindeer are going to be wild only 3 years after the humans are gone, and it will seem like they were never domesticated in the first place

[RomulusTheWild]

I feel like the dingo like dogs, namely the dingo, new guinea singing dog, carolina yellow dog, and Indian Paraiah dog, are the best bet for feral dogs rewilding themselves I would also say basenji and africanis dogs could too in some place were painted wolves have become locally extinct they seem to have slot themselves into that niche

[rickwrites]

I like the idea of "subsidized feral animal" like it gets a government check.