"what happens to the natural world when people disappear?" Topic

…"Many popular ideas about the environment are premised on the conviction that nature is … capable of preserving its natural balance more or less indefinitely if only humans can avoid disturbing it," ecological historian William Cronon wrote in 1995. "These stories are ours, not nature's. The natural world does not organise itself into parables."

In practice, scientists have found that humanity's relationship to the natural world is far more complex than we often assume. This is one of Daskalova's more counterintuitive findings: rather than always being antithetical to nature, human presence can help make life possible for a vast array of species. Even more surprisingly, total abandonment can sometimes have worse consequences for biodiversity than landscapes where some people remain…

The Guardian: link

YouTube link

Laura Dern said it best --

YouTube link
"Woman inherits the Earth."

Woman dies childless, nobody inherits anything.

Mic drop.

Cats might be biggest winners or looser having no staff to do their work for them so have to work to take over

A Panda, outside a long abandoned wet market in the central Chinese city of Wun-Hong Lo, leans in to speak to a Choi River Pangolin standing nearby.

"I thought they'd never leave…"

IMO, Humans are part of our "Natural World" & we affect it for good or ill as do all other species. We are not parasites or "an unnatural species" but a part of the natural order as much as any other creature. How we affect our world is up to us to some extent.

We're also the only species remotely capable of deliberately changing the environment for the better for other creatures.
Who's gonna save the world from the next asteroid strike? The dolphins?

We're always accused of causing species to become extinct. We're never credited for making certain that some species will never become extinct as long as we're around— we call these species "pets" or "livestock." And then some species are essentially entirely dependent upon our presence, even if we don't want them around— like rats and pigeons.

And don't forget our insect friends, the cockroaches! Whatever would they do without us?

Parzival made me laugh! Touche!

Actually, I think raccoons and dolphins inherit the Earth. (Descendants.) Land and sea.

Rats and cockroaches trump all.

Stephen Baxter's book "Evolution" explores this idea. Half the book is a dramatised account of human evolution to the present day, and the other half is a hypothetical dramatised account of what happens to the ecology if human's "devolved" after some cataclysmic event. The central premise being that if intelligence isn't selected for, it will disappear.

I do like the book. It has been criticised because some of the "historical" part is conjecture, but it is a novel and not a biology textbook. I also disagree with his premise that domestic animals such as dogs and cats will not survive the disappearance of humans. If anything the experience of feral dogs, cats, donkeys, camels, horses, pigs, goats, etc in Australia indicates they do fine without humans around.

A book I would recommend. And yes, rats do feature quite heavily in the "after humans" bit….

Quantum theory says it ceases to exist.

I'm sure I have that wrong, it sounds stupid. But I think that's the Schroedingers cat thingy.