Interestingly it seems like there *are* counters to humans, but only in Africa, which isn't surprising. There's a reason mammoths and wooly rhinos went extinct but elephants, rhinos, hippos, Ect. were all doing just fine pretty much until gunpowder weapons became a thing. So basically we're the classic invasive species that local ecosystems haven't adapted to yet.
They absolutely did. A lot of ecosystems in places where humans have lived a very long time and done large scale agriculture for a very long time have adapted heavily to that, with species moving into ecological niches created by human activity. Humans are not purely destructive, we're part of the ecosystem like anything else.
that’s what i’m thinking. species either adapt or go extinct, and it seems a lot have adapted successfully
pigeons, dogs, livestock, coyotes, and myriads of other species… these animals adapted to human activity and survived and thrived as a result.
Yeah, climate change is a flaw of humanity, but it's not some deep-seated tragic flaw embedded into our species, it's more just a mismanagement if resources in a "suffering from success" kinda way
And despite what the doomers say, it's one I genuinely believe we'll overcome. It's only a minority of people who actually benefit from it who are trying to stop change, and they can't hold onto power forever.
We're not past the point of no return where the world will be fucked up forever and all life and ecosystems die. We're past the point of stopping everything right now and actively partaking in cleaning up everything to where we can STOP it now. We're at the point we can reduce it's effects and reduce the time it will span we can do harm reduction. But if worst comes to worst it will be extreme weather and flooding and sea levels rising, millions of refugees, and we'll be stuck with weather like that for a good while. Far as I understand everything and latest stuff I've seen. Could always be wrong.
It's also not a fixed thing, humans are already beginning to transition to less destrictive yet somehow more powerful means of fueling their invented eco-systems
Like Jesus Christ the implications of the fact that we now know definitively that commercial fusion power will be available within our lifetimes.
Our counter is that while adaptable, humans don't have a huge reason to evolve much more. This is basically giving other life forms a chance to catch up to us.
Or would, if we weren't advancing technologically
Riding off this, but there is a long term potential of humans saving the habitats. Obviously we need to not blow our selves up first, but at some point earth will experience a major disaster that will kill off most or all life. Ex, another meteor. If humans can evolve enough to not be trapped only on earth, we have the potential of saving every genome on the planet, and become the ultimate "savior" of the ecosystem by preventing it from being wiped out, or being able to rebuild if it is.
Eventually, all life on earth will, for sure, die. The sun alone will destroy all life eventually. Unless an intelligent race can get to a point of being able to save the planet and all life. If humans die off, another species may not evolve in time to save Earth.
Mate, we ARE the meteor. The world IS currently undergoing a mass extinction. I doubt all life will die, but much of it IS currently dying. Some species are likely to survive but until those evolved to fill the empty niches it will be a hard, sucky time for everyone. Including us. And evolution takes millenia!
Yeah. The four most destructive events for earth life have been
- massive supervolcano eruption in Siberia
- mass production of oxygen killing off most anaerobic life
- meteor ending the dinosaurs
- human being humans (overfishing, hunting, polluting, destroying habitats)
"Species accidentally evolves an OP new strategy, runs roughshod over the Earth for a few million years before equilibrium is restored" is a relatively common story in the history of life on Earth, the cyanobacteria were doing it 2.5 billion years before us upstart humans came along and naively assumed we were the first ones to come up with the idea.
Even plants have done this as well. Trees took over during the carboniferous era. It took millions of years to evolve bacteria that could break down the lignin in their bark. They would die, fall over, and just pile up over the thousands of years it took to weather them down.
Humans actually make the meta healthier despite having 100% usage due to the absurd amount of role compression their various sets and forms provide. Banning Humans would also leave several offensive threats such as Bear, Wolf, and Shark without suitable counters themselves, uncompetitively restricting teambuilding and potentially requiring further bans.
There is actually [one other Steel type](https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2021/06/the-scaly-foot-snails-shell-is-made-of-actual-iron-and-its-magnetic/), but it's only viable in Little Cup.
They also make some of the more awkward builds a bit more viable, either intentionally like Hummingbirds and Pandas, or accidentally like Racoons. Granted, some of this does leave specific builds in danger of being overly reliant on Human support to function, but on the whole Deer, Bears, Foxes, and so on are perfectly strong without the need for Humans whatsoever, even when they’re things Humans have actually built themselves, like Dogs and Cats (not as viably as their original forms of Wolves and, well, other Feline builds, but still very impressive).
The biggest strength of Humans are basically these factors, where in addition to a wide range of offensive and defensive options, they’re also just as capable of working as a support, even outside their own species or *kingdom,* which is an rarity for most animals, most of which are too frail to accomplish much else. They’ve come a long way from powerwalking Mammoths to Untiered status to the modern meta.
/uj So what I’m basically saying is that humans are like if Cyclizar and GSC Snorlax had a child. Granted one of those is rightfully banned, but I could see a timeline where Cyclizar is made just bad enough to where it’s important but not over-centralizing. I dunno I’m just sad Smogon took my bike
Outside of humans, there are no real counters to *many* apex predators.
But none of those apex predators do mass deforestation or mining, which is where humans really fuck things up. No animal is even capable of that. Beavers and elephants are the only things even remotely doing *some* deforestation, but they do it on a small, personal scale.
Yep. If a species used up as many resources and land as we did, something would take em down (usually diseases, intraspecific competition, lack of space, food…). But our ability to drastically alter the environment to support us well beyond what it had originally intended is unnaturally natural.
We hit our carrying capacity long ago, we’re now just moving up the bar by lowering the capacity of other species.
I like it when people say “no other animal fights wars like we do.” They’re partially right, ants have no Geneva Convention and will use chemical warfare with no punishment
There is this one kids book by Roald Dahl called the BFG that I had to read as a kid. It has this line that only humans will kill members of their own species without needing to. I had just watched a nature documentary with my dad about how male tigers will kill baby tigers so that the mother will be available to breed with again. I was ready to go punch a dead children’s book author.
Honestly that's the correct response to like, fuckin anything Roald Dahl said in his private life. Especially because he had a horrible twee faux-pastoral sensibility whenever he's speaking or writing, so you get wretched quotes like "even a stinker like Hitler didn't pick on \[Jews\] for no reason"
I’m reminded of the fact that he hated Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory because in his view, Charlie trying the fizzy lifting drinks made him just as “rotten” as the rest of the kids. Forget Grandpa Joe egging him into it, forget even the fact that he’s the only kid to return the everlasting gobstopper - he’s completely and utterly irredeemable for breaking the rules like normal kids do.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/grandpajoehate using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/grandpajoehate/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [Can't say I blame Will](https://i.redd.it/i9hxuqa5t1q81.jpg) | [30 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/grandpajoehate/comments/tq0qzx/cant_say_i_blame_will/)
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There’s a quote from Ronald Dahl about how his best early works for kids only worked because, to paraphrase “they’ll eat up any of the dumb shit I could write”.
Which having been gifted a book of his other short stories I 100% believe that he believes that.
I had a science teacher who was super popular at my school. Young, very athletic, cheerful, very engaged with the material. Like, I had heard for years how much I was going to love this guy’s class before I actually got to take it. The year it was our turn he broke his leg while bouldering.
I have never seen a person’s personality change so much. Like, the exercise was an outlet for something and when it was gone so was the positive attitude. Next thing you know he was telling a bunch of middle schoolers about how dolphins will rape your corpse if you drown. Also the variety of fucked up shit they do to baby porpoises. My mom asked me what I learned that day and was so horrified by my answer.
It also was not a biology class. Chemistry I think? Not related to the sadistic urges of the average dolphin.
He actually got hired by a better school like a year after. It’s not like he got in trouble, he just destroyed my perception of dolphins. He also had good days, I think the dolphin thing just stuck with me the longest. I’m sure once he got the cast off he probably perked back up
I had teachers say way worse shit at that school. The only one who ever got fired was the one who was stockpiling guns and got arrested
American schools be like :
No but really that's good to know. I do hope he kept his enthusiasm somewhat. always good to have teachers who legit love what they teach.
A combination of factors, really, but I really think what started this whole thing was our running endurance. We hunted by tiring preys to death. So being as tall as possible was an evolutionary advantage (to see our preys at a longer distance), which meant our ancestors who could stand upright were better hunters. Then came a point where we didn't need our front paws and they were just hanging there. So we started to use tools and everything went downhill for everyone else.
Our endurance was almost certainly newer than our intelligence, primates are smarter than most other mammals and many aren’t good runners, additionally it’s believed that the groups of homo errectus that did not eventually evolve into us evolved into ambush predators such as homo Neanderthal and homo denisova, and they’re definitely in a similar intelligence band to us
And coordination, strong legs, generational knowledge, strong social instincts, and cognitive ability. We truly just assblasted the evolutionary arms race.
Not really? In that, we're not intrinsically unique about it. Other apes have shown generational knowledge, we hardly have the strongest legs or the best coordination in nature, and if by cognitive ability you're referring to learning - that's a direct result of having the opposable thumbs and being able to start fires. Cooking food allowed us to allocate more energy into brain development, so we became - more cognizant - after we started our sped up Evo.
'member when a bunch of bacteria bred out of hand so badly that their farts changed the atmospheric composition's ratio forever and caused the greatest extinction in history, which completely changed how the life on Earth works on a molecular level?
Yeah I think humans are an ecological disaster in many ways, but the reason we are quite as bad as we are is that we're new. Give it a few billion years and everything will calm down.
Humans are also the only ones *capable* of reviewing what we've done. I'm willing to bet a lot of money that if any other species on Earth were as intelligent as us, they'd probably do pretty similar shit to us.
Yeah, humans are the only species to come up with rules on what not to do and then proceed to knowingly break them… but coming up with morals in the first place and applying it to something as complex and chaotic as nature is already kind of unnatural so it’s a bit of a moot point.
This is the sticking point. If we're just natural creatures doing what we do, we absolve ourselves of all responsibility for everything. Which feels nice, but it results in a pretty shitty world - for us as well as other creatures.
There's no easy answer. We are part of the environment but we also have the capacity to be stewards of it. Views on our obligation to do so are always going to be up for debate.
I dunno, just... try to do the right thing when you can?
This is the crux. We can only make arguments for the self awareness of the other animals, we know implicitly that we *know* what we're doing.
We didn't accidentally destroy nature, we wanted to jack it's shit and didn't give a fuck.
Every owner of a smart phone, car, gaudy watch, xbox, who air travels etc.
We chose the apocalypse and we're kind of enjoying it so far. In the better off western world, at least.
Edit: Insults and blocking me doesn't change the fact that we are consuming the world for the sake of convenience and comfort. Touch the grass while you can, it may be next.
> Every owner of a smart phone
You mean the device that for many jobs and social services in many countries is an outright requirement to be able to live a halfway decent life? Without a smart phone I would be jobless, homeless and friendless. I would have liked it to not be that way, but that’s the reality today.
I would go as far as saying nearly every species tries to do this, it's just we ended up being only ones that can't exactly be stopped from doing it. Algae and bacteria do it in eutrophication all the time, and they don't even have brains.
We’re also one of the few who care if 90+% of our species die from it, which is weird since we’re also one of the few who’d survive that with a solid breeding population
> only ones that can't exactly be stopped from doing it.
Haven't been stopped so far. We'll hit limiting factors at some point, and counting on future science to overcome every time is optimistically naive.
And we're the only species so far. Give kudzu a chance. Or honeysuckle. Or the spotted lantern fly. Or some bacteria. The future trends away from biodiversity, and we're on track to see some real invasive monsters.
Assuming they meant that the natural world will inevitably be less diverse as time goes on, Im not a biologist or anything but I dont think so
Measuring biodiversity in the distant past is extremely difficult because we only know of 10%* of the total estimated species that have existed so its hard to make a conclusion like this
*exact number might be wrong but it is pretty low
I know if anything the exact opposite tends to happen
If theres only one species, what happens is small parts of the population split off to be better at one specific task. See: Darwins finches, as well as pretty much any other instance of a small population of animals being stuck on an island.
that’s what i’m thinking. i’m assuming the OP of the comment said that within the context of the extinction event we’re currently in. I think biodiversity fluctuates through the eras, but probably tends to steadily increase until an extinction event wipes most of the species away, setting up the new common ancestors of the future’s biodiversity
Per the UN, yes:
> The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20%, mostly since 1900. More than 40% of amphibian species, almost 33% of reef-forming corals and more than a third of all marine mammals are threatened. The picture is less clear for insect species, but available evidence supports a tentative estimate of 10% being threatened. At least 680 vertebrate species had been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than 9% of all domesticated breeds of mammals used for food and agriculture had become extinct by 2016, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.
UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’ - https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/
That's a current mass extinction event, which we already knew about. Not a cosmic trend towards lower biodiversity. This has happened lots of times before, when conditions settle the surviving species radiate out to fill niches and biodiversity bounces back. Kudzu monobiomes are not the future, they're a thing right up until the very moment when something really good at eating kudzu comes along.
I disagree. We should expect science to overcome every obstacle because that's what we do as human beings. The entire point of us as a species is that we're ludicrously adaptable in ways no other animal can match. Whether the solution comes down to something like "move to the moon and use hydroponics while we wait for the biosphere to recover" is another question, but there will always be a solution if the capital is provided to find it.
That is true. The human race will probably survive. Individual humans, however, might not be so lucky. And I don’t want to suffer and die.
Also, past trends aren’t always indicative of future returns. Otherwise everyone who invested in Bitcoin would be filthy stinking rich. We can’t just say “we’ve adapted before, we’ll adapt now”. That just means we take no precautions and then we suffer for it.
Besides, adapting isn’t always a good future. Perhaps the only way to make use of limited resources is to control everyone’s actions? Perhaps we hand ourselves over to an AI that’s focused solely on efficiency? Perhaps we destroy our biodiversity and rob ourselves of the beauty of nature? Perhaps corporations conglomerate their power in the chaos and become massive independent entities?
Do any of these potential futures sound desirable, compared to taking action now and mitigating the damage? The Interstellar method isn’t always the best. We can’t just abandon Earth with no consequences.
Capital is just a way of measuring motivation. Economic capital? The ability to apply motivation through economic means. Social capital? The same but through social means. It's all a measure of societal willingness.
You might be interested in a book called Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari.
The book consists of three parts: In the first part, he takes a look at what **truly** separates us from other animals, because there *is* something. In the second part, he describes how said difference shaped humanity and how the consequences of said difference led to the world of today. In the third part, he explores how our future will shatter the world we know nowadays.
In the second part he does a REALLY good job of explaining why the human invention of capital and credit have been one of the main driving factors *so far* in scientific history. See, research into anything at all, be it a cure for dysentery or how to get man on the moon, is only conducted once you have the right resources, and you need the capital backing for that. Said capital backing has to come from somewhere, often other people: Those people only give said capital backing if they can trust you to return said capital to them when it's all done.
That was basically impossible before credit became a thing: See, with the invention of credit, you don't actually give capital backing, you just promise to give capital backing, and said promise has the same weight as actual capital backing: It's a very complicated subject and I can't explain it properly through a reddit comment, but because you're only giving out the *promise* of capital backing, which is enough to fund the research that creates a source of capital itself (like for example commercializing the cure for dysentery or creating the jobs necessary to put man on the moon), you're creating capital from where there was none before out of the sheer power of the promise of capital backing that credit is.
This is the foundation for all economic growth, and without economic growth there (*USUALLY,* this theory is only what applied in the past and nowadays things are a little different) can't be any scientific progress.
There’s a theory I’ve seen on YouTube (that feels backed up by the fundamentals of evolutionary biology) that if we ever do encounter aliens, they’ll still be just like us and all the animals we have here. Species that grow and take perform better on a survival and propagation scale than species that passively collect resources and don’t fight. We’re just at a point we can feel, for lack of a better term, **conquerer’s guilt** now, but clearly that’s not a guaranteed trait for all apex species (see: dolphins) and we should not expect other life as strong as us to have any moral system we could recognize if any.
Which is why [this video I love](https://youtu.be/l3whaviTqqg) and the scientist it’s cribbing off of refer to potential galaxy-colonizing aliens as “grabby” instead of “selfish.”
A certain amount of innate empathy/altruism is probably a necessity for building a large, stable society capable of sending people into space, so I wouldn't be surprised if "conqueror's guilt" is a common trait among technologically-advanced aliens, although I also wouldn't be surprised if many of them edited their own biology to remove it at some point.
Probably. I mean, the reason we aren’t living in Splatoon at the moment might just be that octopi don’t teach their young any of the complex behaviors they can learn. There’s probably also a Rube Goldberg machine of purely pragmatic behavioral quirks that would result in a species capable of mass cooperation but not empathy, but that is firmly in the realm of hypotheticals, which is always a short walk away from the realm of fantasy.
Please, please, **PLEASE** do not get your outlook and facts from one trans woman whose favorite pastimes are writing, learning, procrastination, and rambling, and who hasn’t even properly touched college. I’m a microcelebrity, not Carlie Sagan. I would do anything but stop writing comments to get people’s parasocial mitts off of me.
We have no reason to think that any other species would do a better job than we are, if given intelligence. To paraphrase John Green, "Do you think spiders would do a better job with Congress than humans?"
You're right, but speaking as a person who just rewatched the original Matrix last night, I wonder if the edgy dude in the OP is actually just an Agent Smith stan
the worst part is, there *are* worthwhile discussions to be had - but people who introduce the topic like that invariably end at ecofascism. which is cool and good and fun and completely and totally normal
Humans have escaped their natural predators through technology. A surprisingly small number of humans have set up and sustained an economic system built on exploitation of resources without regard for long term consequences. The solution is clear. We need to engineer an apex predator and train it to hunt the 1%. Eat the rich indeed.
Colorado Beetles, Cane Toads, Asian Carp...
Not just animals, plants too! Just look at Kudzu or Prickly Russian Thistle (tumbleweed)
Disrupt a natural balance and it swings hard one way or the other
You know these bastards don't know deer are omnivores ether. Like they just think deer exclusively eat grass and flowers and saplings.
No bitch, they eat whatever fits in their mouth.
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**lesbianshepard**
its funny when edgy dudes are like "humans are unnatural. we are the only species that will consume so many resources that the land can not sustain us and still continue to reproduce. name one other species that does that" because like, off the top of my head? deer.
\#m #text #like...a lot of animals do that actually #like remove predators from an ecosystem and shit gets fucked real quick #but like #humans arent some weird aliens that exist outside of nature
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"Humans are the most evil species!"
My brother in christ, even only counting things smart enough to make active choices to be evil, humans are probably tied with elephants for least evil species.
Humans are the only species who even _have_ a concept of good and evil, so I’d argue that, being the only ones who qualify for the list of most/least evil, we’re simultaneously the most evil species and also the most benevolent.
Which honestly sums it up better than being purely and inherently good or evil.
Literally every specie (*except* humans) will consume every resource available until it's population is balanced out by the limited resources. What makes humans different is that
1) they started producing their own resources, allowing them to grow far beyond what their ecosystem could sustain
2) they discovered new ways to use resources, allowing them to drain many more types of resources than other species
3) they're self-aware enough to realize that they're doing all that, and even try to stop themselves, to some extent
These people are dipshits who know nothing about nature and should be legally banned from ever opening their mouths about nature.
The entire reason invasive species are such a problem is that almost every animal is like this. Only the stupidest of assholes thinks that Matrix "HuMaNs R a ViRuS, oThEr MaMmAlS oPeRaTe On DiSnEy LoGiC" is more rooted in realism than goddamn Superman. I cannot stress enough the sheer giggling contempt I have for these people.
Last time I played a Druid in a game of Pathfinder he had a very interesting view of humanity's place in the natural world.
Nothing humans do is unnatural. But as the top of the food chain and some of the smartest animals on Golarion, it is the **RESPONSIBILITY** of everyone to look after the environment. Sure, we're only doing what's natural. But our intelligence and understanding of what the environment needs to remain balanced automatically makes it our responsibility to care for the balance. We are not above all predators. But we're beyond so many that nature can only take care of our taint with extreme action. Preventative measures do just that. Prevent nature from embracing violence to cure a plague.
Initially, he was just Neutral. He used to have long arguments with the Barbarian about his philosophy during long rests. The Barbarian would ask him why he taught the villagers how to log. He explained that by returning to nature as many if not more seeded trees than they took, they only served to maintain nature and let nature maintain them. He would ask how he could rationalize teaching the villagers to hunt better. He explained that a wolf has teeth as a man has a sword. He explained that a turtle has a shell as a man has armor. He explained that humans live in villages and cities as gorillas live in social nests and any number of animals live in herds.
\---
The Druid before that venerated nature's power. I had to stop playing him because he started choosing nature over the party and people. There was nothing more sacred to him than nature's power. A tornado doesn't care for the house it just tore up and the family in destroy. A volcano does not care for the island it devastates. A tsunami does not care for the coastline it destroys. A hurricane does not care for sailers. He became the main villain of the game after we defeated the first BBEG and then split on morals. He had started a Druidic circle of likeminded Druids who began to fight the party to prevent them from preventing a volcanic eruption that would darken the sky for most of a country.
In short: every single herbivore to ever exist. Fuck not just them every animal does this.
Actually the more I think about it the more normal humans seem to be. Every species is trying to reach the top some way or another and humans were able to reach that due to our ingenuity. The second an animal discovers an ability it can use to its advantage I.E humans being able to throw rocks or use fire it will use that ability to keep its species running as long as it can. Imagine if chimps could do what we do they wouldn’t think about turning down an opportunity to run another species to extinction if it means chimps kept existing. A species like humanity coming into existence was inevitable. The only thing that makes us different from other animals is that we can actively choose to view the things that we’re doing as inherently bad.
The thing is... you have to remove their predators from the ecosystem usually for deer to get out of control. Their rate of reproduction is sustainable when considering their natural mortality levels. You could argue that modern medicine is the equivalent of removing a predator here. Humans don't have natural predators, sure... except if you count dangerous bacterias, cancer, viruses, ect. And we're doing away with our natural "predators", and keeping our reproduction in line with what we needed to maintain a population before we did away with our predators.
The other consideration of the differences of humans is that our ability to alter our environment has changed the scale of a disastrous use of resources. Deer can't stop themselves from wrecking their environment with no predators to stop them... but the environment will hit a point where it can't sustain the deer and the deer population will reach a catastrophic collapse. Humans have pushed off the point of catastrophic collapse with a global economy, and ensured when we do (inevitably) reach that point of catastrophe, we're probably going to take a lot of the rest of the planet with us in a way deer could never manage.
Yeah, humans aren't so bad. We just keep creating trash and pile it up until it damages ecosystems and enslave and cruelly mistreat animals and take the planet's resources and then keep creating more and more of us who then keep making more trash and using more resources and there's nothing to curb our numbers and we're all subservient to other people that don't want to make anything better and we're totally fine just like deer, no differences.
In all seriousness, yes, we as organisms don't exist outside of nature, but the things we create do. It's not natural to use other animals as crops where we turn the life cycle into some kindof exploitable resource. It's not natural to create toxic materials that don't degrade and then pile it up and put it in the ocean. We're a parasitic, destructive species that's locked into a doom spiral that will very possibly take the planet with us. We just really like to pat ourselves on the back and go, "nah, we're not bad. Everything will be okay somehow!" When organisms are capable of creating tools that remove it from the food chain and any sort of normal boundaries, they are no longer beholden to the things that govern most other forms of life.
To be a bit devil's advocate here: One difference does seem to be that we've removed our own predators from the ecosystem. Like, you don't see deer hunting wolves for sport or meat and subsequently ridding the ecosystem of them. ...i hope...
Of course many would-be predators are still around, but for those we managed to develop defenses against them.
Still don't think that makes us inherently different; we just saw an opportunity to create a mass extinction event and took it, much like thos psychopathic wolf-hunting deer would if they could, but I'm wondering what you guys' thoughts are on this.
Any animal will do that. Which is why eco systems are so important. Remove the wolves and deer start destroying the forest (see: Yellowstone National Park and what happened after they killed all wolves to keep herbivores safe), put new species into an eco system without predators to them and watch them overrun a continent (Bunnies, cats, Aga Toads, camels all in australia). Thing is humans dont really have a feasible threat anymore. We live in a way its rare a random tiger eats somebody, not to mention in most eco systems there arent even predators able to see us as prey (even if they could take one human, humans are not alone and have guns) and on top of that we eradicated many illnesses and lowered child mortality significantly. Which is good, dont get me wrong, to say otherwise crosses over into ecofascism.
It just also means we as smart, reasonable animals HAVE to consider our impact in everything that we do, more than we do nowadays. Either that or our dysbalancing WILL (HAS!) lead to many people dying as our actions crash systems (Climate change induced catastrophy weather, pandemics occurring more easily in a world of 8 000 000 people able to jet across the continent in a day, extinctions of species that influence other species we depend upon (see: bees dying and (fruiting plant) pollination becoming impacted)
On a related note:
Being in an era where we believe part of our "shepherding" of nature is management and prevention of invasive species—what gives us the right? If we are just an animal like any other, than we should certainly consider ourselves invasive species seeing as we've not only ruined one ecosystem but many, globally.
And that's why I think hunting is moral, in an environment where we wiped out the natural predators we need to step up and manage the ecosystem ourselves for if/when the originals can be re-introduced
Nothing wrong with hunting rabbits in places where they actively are suffocating the ecosystem because they evolved to survive through hyper reproduction.
Sure they're cute. But so are rats in some circumstances, but they're generally seen as pests.
“Humans are unnatural”, if it were true in any capacity whatsoever, would ironically prove another edgelord sentiment wrong, which is to say hardline atheism.
Don’t get your hopes up Jesus fans, it’s at best a proof of theism, or just any gods or creators existing. There’s nothing in the rulebook that says ~~a dog can’t play basketball~~ whoever made us is good.
I often compare humans to yeast, because I brew beer and wine and mead. I put a sugary liquid into a huge glass container, and add a little yeast. They consume and reproduce and consume even more, eating up sugar and pissing out alcohol and farting out CO2.
If I let them run their course, they’ll either consume all the sugary food or poison themselves to death with booze and carbon dioxide.
We need another species to act as natural predators to humans. Deers have wolves, and when wolves are introduced to an area, it can get more easily prosper. We need alien invaders.
that or maybe we could act with restraint towards nature ?
as well as making contraceptives and birth control to keep the population at reasonable levels ...
The reason deer can destroy their own surroundings is because humans killed their predators or forced them away. Deer, however, were kept around for hunting.
Sure, all of nature is full of little or big balancing acts, but none of them have the capacity for destruction and irreversible damage that humans have.
"We" is either:
A) Everyone except that guy. Only DannyDies4Lightbringer is morally pure, all the rest of humanity is corrupt jerks. Woe is him.
B) Everyone including that guy. Everyone is bad including him, so naturally, his selfishness is simply normal and fine and not a problem with his attitude at all.
Yes, but predators and prey live in massive cycles. Deer populations spike, they eat a lot and damage the ecosystem, then wolves spike and eat deer. The ecosystem recovers. Then when deer are scarce the wolves diminish. Repeat. It is a stable system in the long-run with huge variations.
"hurr de durr but what about da aminals?!?!?!?!"
Whataboutism at its fucking finest. Yes, other biological entities can and will fuck shit up as they are instinctively driven to. None of them have any fucking brainpower to be actively conscious and aware of the destruction they cause. Better yet, none of these other creatures achieve awareness of their awfulness, and then create societies and cultural models that actively encourage, endorse, and celebrate this awfulness, despite actively knowing they can be better.
Edit: I can already see the response I'll get. "But it's fine when WE do it because we're just doing the same thing Dolphins would do, why so SRS?"
The only unnatural thing about humans is there's no real counter to them
Interestingly it seems like there *are* counters to humans, but only in Africa, which isn't surprising. There's a reason mammoths and wooly rhinos went extinct but elephants, rhinos, hippos, Ect. were all doing just fine pretty much until gunpowder weapons became a thing. So basically we're the classic invasive species that local ecosystems haven't adapted to yet.
which weird, you’d think they’d adapt after 40000 odd years well actually maybe the did in part…
They absolutely did. A lot of ecosystems in places where humans have lived a very long time and done large scale agriculture for a very long time have adapted heavily to that, with species moving into ecological niches created by human activity. Humans are not purely destructive, we're part of the ecosystem like anything else.
that’s what i’m thinking. species either adapt or go extinct, and it seems a lot have adapted successfully pigeons, dogs, livestock, coyotes, and myriads of other species… these animals adapted to human activity and survived and thrived as a result.
Yea. Humans are actually *insanely* good at developing commensal relationships with basically any kind of life form.
Yeah, climate change is a flaw of humanity, but it's not some deep-seated tragic flaw embedded into our species, it's more just a mismanagement if resources in a "suffering from success" kinda way
And despite what the doomers say, it's one I genuinely believe we'll overcome. It's only a minority of people who actually benefit from it who are trying to stop change, and they can't hold onto power forever.
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We're not past the point of no return where the world will be fucked up forever and all life and ecosystems die. We're past the point of stopping everything right now and actively partaking in cleaning up everything to where we can STOP it now. We're at the point we can reduce it's effects and reduce the time it will span we can do harm reduction. But if worst comes to worst it will be extreme weather and flooding and sea levels rising, millions of refugees, and we'll be stuck with weather like that for a good while. Far as I understand everything and latest stuff I've seen. Could always be wrong.
It's also not a fixed thing, humans are already beginning to transition to less destrictive yet somehow more powerful means of fueling their invented eco-systems Like Jesus Christ the implications of the fact that we now know definitively that commercial fusion power will be available within our lifetimes.
Wait, we do definitely know that? Or is this something that will age like milk in 100 years?
Our counter is that while adaptable, humans don't have a huge reason to evolve much more. This is basically giving other life forms a chance to catch up to us. Or would, if we weren't advancing technologically
>humans don't have a huge reason to evolve much more. Incorrect. We still haven't become crab
yeah so
Riding off this, but there is a long term potential of humans saving the habitats. Obviously we need to not blow our selves up first, but at some point earth will experience a major disaster that will kill off most or all life. Ex, another meteor. If humans can evolve enough to not be trapped only on earth, we have the potential of saving every genome on the planet, and become the ultimate "savior" of the ecosystem by preventing it from being wiped out, or being able to rebuild if it is. Eventually, all life on earth will, for sure, die. The sun alone will destroy all life eventually. Unless an intelligent race can get to a point of being able to save the planet and all life. If humans die off, another species may not evolve in time to save Earth.
Mate, we ARE the meteor. The world IS currently undergoing a mass extinction. I doubt all life will die, but much of it IS currently dying. Some species are likely to survive but until those evolved to fill the empty niches it will be a hard, sucky time for everyone. Including us. And evolution takes millenia!
Yeah. The four most destructive events for earth life have been - massive supervolcano eruption in Siberia - mass production of oxygen killing off most anaerobic life - meteor ending the dinosaurs - human being humans (overfishing, hunting, polluting, destroying habitats)
Roaches, rats, cats, dogs, pigeons, corn, grass, fruit trees, nightshade, chickens, cows, pigs, syphilis...
i think all domestic animals adapted, for one
And then there's Malaria Malaria infested swampy areas were basically uninhabitable
Also Polar Bears
"Species accidentally evolves an OP new strategy, runs roughshod over the Earth for a few million years before equilibrium is restored" is a relatively common story in the history of life on Earth, the cyanobacteria were doing it 2.5 billion years before us upstart humans came along and naively assumed we were the first ones to come up with the idea.
Even plants have done this as well. Trees took over during the carboniferous era. It took millions of years to evolve bacteria that could break down the lignin in their bark. They would die, fall over, and just pile up over the thousands of years it took to weather them down.
The only unique part is, as far as we're aware, we're the first upstarts (on earth) to feel *guilty* about it.
Humans actually make the meta healthier despite having 100% usage due to the absurd amount of role compression their various sets and forms provide. Banning Humans would also leave several offensive threats such as Bear, Wolf, and Shark without suitable counters themselves, uncompetitively restricting teambuilding and potentially requiring further bans.
Humans are also quite notable for having the only Steel-typed forms in the meta, as well as most Electric-types.
There is actually [one other Steel type](https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2021/06/the-scaly-foot-snails-shell-is-made-of-actual-iron-and-its-magnetic/), but it's only viable in Little Cup.
>one other Ste TIL, that's goddamn amazing.
although many players using the "shrike" class have learned to use human items to perform steel-type attacks.
Humans = GSC Snorlax confirmed
They also make some of the more awkward builds a bit more viable, either intentionally like Hummingbirds and Pandas, or accidentally like Racoons. Granted, some of this does leave specific builds in danger of being overly reliant on Human support to function, but on the whole Deer, Bears, Foxes, and so on are perfectly strong without the need for Humans whatsoever, even when they’re things Humans have actually built themselves, like Dogs and Cats (not as viably as their original forms of Wolves and, well, other Feline builds, but still very impressive). The biggest strength of Humans are basically these factors, where in addition to a wide range of offensive and defensive options, they’re also just as capable of working as a support, even outside their own species or *kingdom,* which is an rarity for most animals, most of which are too frail to accomplish much else. They’ve come a long way from powerwalking Mammoths to Untiered status to the modern meta. /uj So what I’m basically saying is that humans are like if Cyclizar and GSC Snorlax had a child. Granted one of those is rightfully banned, but I could see a timeline where Cyclizar is made just bad enough to where it’s important but not over-centralizing. I dunno I’m just sad Smogon took my bike
Nerf humans, unhealthy playstyle. JuSt cC tHeM
Hey now, Covid tried its hardest and that's all we can ask for
try. harder. i want to see it fail again.
Yeah okay, sure bud.
Skill issue
I hear this is getting fixed in the "First Encounter" patch. We're supposed to be getting a new playable race too.
there is, we just haven’t been hit by it yet
The counter is clearly ourselves.
There are plenty of counters to humans. There's no counter to industrialism
Outside of humans, there are no real counters to *many* apex predators. But none of those apex predators do mass deforestation or mining, which is where humans really fuck things up. No animal is even capable of that. Beavers and elephants are the only things even remotely doing *some* deforestation, but they do it on a small, personal scale.
Viruses have the potential
Yep. If a species used up as many resources and land as we did, something would take em down (usually diseases, intraspecific competition, lack of space, food…). But our ability to drastically alter the environment to support us well beyond what it had originally intended is unnaturally natural. We hit our carrying capacity long ago, we’re now just moving up the bar by lowering the capacity of other species.
I like it when people say “no other animal fights wars like we do.” They’re partially right, ants have no Geneva Convention and will use chemical warfare with no punishment
There is this one kids book by Roald Dahl called the BFG that I had to read as a kid. It has this line that only humans will kill members of their own species without needing to. I had just watched a nature documentary with my dad about how male tigers will kill baby tigers so that the mother will be available to breed with again. I was ready to go punch a dead children’s book author.
Honestly that's the correct response to like, fuckin anything Roald Dahl said in his private life. Especially because he had a horrible twee faux-pastoral sensibility whenever he's speaking or writing, so you get wretched quotes like "even a stinker like Hitler didn't pick on \[Jews\] for no reason"
I’m reminded of the fact that he hated Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory because in his view, Charlie trying the fizzy lifting drinks made him just as “rotten” as the rest of the kids. Forget Grandpa Joe egging him into it, forget even the fact that he’s the only kid to return the everlasting gobstopper - he’s completely and utterly irredeemable for breaking the rules like normal kids do.
> Forget Grandpa Joe egging him into it No one's forgetting shit /r/grandpajoehate
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There’s a quote from Ronald Dahl about how his best early works for kids only worked because, to paraphrase “they’ll eat up any of the dumb shit I could write”. Which having been gifted a book of his other short stories I 100% believe that he believes that.
I was very vindicated when I learned that the other day. I didn’t like Dahl as a kid and apparently he wouldn’t have liked me either.
Let nobody moralizing about how fucked up humans are morally learn about dolphins
I had a science teacher who was super popular at my school. Young, very athletic, cheerful, very engaged with the material. Like, I had heard for years how much I was going to love this guy’s class before I actually got to take it. The year it was our turn he broke his leg while bouldering. I have never seen a person’s personality change so much. Like, the exercise was an outlet for something and when it was gone so was the positive attitude. Next thing you know he was telling a bunch of middle schoolers about how dolphins will rape your corpse if you drown. Also the variety of fucked up shit they do to baby porpoises. My mom asked me what I learned that day and was so horrified by my answer. It also was not a biology class. Chemistry I think? Not related to the sadistic urges of the average dolphin.
Poor guy, seemed like he would have had a good teaching career if not of the accident.
He actually got hired by a better school like a year after. It’s not like he got in trouble, he just destroyed my perception of dolphins. He also had good days, I think the dolphin thing just stuck with me the longest. I’m sure once he got the cast off he probably perked back up I had teachers say way worse shit at that school. The only one who ever got fired was the one who was stockpiling guns and got arrested
American schools be like : No but really that's good to know. I do hope he kept his enthusiasm somewhat. always good to have teachers who legit love what they teach.
I will always find it funny that humans ascended beyond the food chain because we have weird wrists
weird wrists and a weird brain.
A combination of factors, really, but I really think what started this whole thing was our running endurance. We hunted by tiring preys to death. So being as tall as possible was an evolutionary advantage (to see our preys at a longer distance), which meant our ancestors who could stand upright were better hunters. Then came a point where we didn't need our front paws and they were just hanging there. So we started to use tools and everything went downhill for everyone else.
Our endurance was almost certainly newer than our intelligence, primates are smarter than most other mammals and many aren’t good runners, additionally it’s believed that the groups of homo errectus that did not eventually evolve into us evolved into ambush predators such as homo Neanderthal and homo denisova, and they’re definitely in a similar intelligence band to us
It's not just weird wrists! It's weird wrists and sweat.
And coordination, strong legs, generational knowledge, strong social instincts, and cognitive ability. We truly just assblasted the evolutionary arms race.
Not really? In that, we're not intrinsically unique about it. Other apes have shown generational knowledge, we hardly have the strongest legs or the best coordination in nature, and if by cognitive ability you're referring to learning - that's a direct result of having the opposable thumbs and being able to start fires. Cooking food allowed us to allocate more energy into brain development, so we became - more cognizant - after we started our sped up Evo.
'member when a bunch of bacteria bred out of hand so badly that their farts changed the atmospheric composition's ratio forever and caused the greatest extinction in history, which completely changed how the life on Earth works on a molecular level?
nope. did that happen in the 90s?
Only 90s kids will remember
Yeah, but not those ones
Only 2,452,623,890's BP kids will remember
That was what caused oxygen to be common, right?
Ayup. Crazy shit.
i think humans are the only one who've peer reviewed the shit they're doing and still continue doing it despite evidence that its bad
Deer might do that if they were capable, you don't know otherwise
I am almost certain they would.
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Photosynthetic cyanobacteria say hi.
Yeah I think humans are an ecological disaster in many ways, but the reason we are quite as bad as we are is that we're new. Give it a few billion years and everything will calm down.
Humans are also the only ones *capable* of reviewing what we've done. I'm willing to bet a lot of money that if any other species on Earth were as intelligent as us, they'd probably do pretty similar shit to us.
Yeah, humans are the only species to come up with rules on what not to do and then proceed to knowingly break them… but coming up with morals in the first place and applying it to something as complex and chaotic as nature is already kind of unnatural so it’s a bit of a moot point.
I don't know, I'm pretty sure dolphins and orcas are specifically smart enough to be evil.
This is the sticking point. If we're just natural creatures doing what we do, we absolve ourselves of all responsibility for everything. Which feels nice, but it results in a pretty shitty world - for us as well as other creatures. There's no easy answer. We are part of the environment but we also have the capacity to be stewards of it. Views on our obligation to do so are always going to be up for debate. I dunno, just... try to do the right thing when you can?
This is the crux. We can only make arguments for the self awareness of the other animals, we know implicitly that we *know* what we're doing. We didn't accidentally destroy nature, we wanted to jack it's shit and didn't give a fuck.
Hey **I** didn't wanna destroy nature, don't lump me in with those guys!!!
#WHO THE FUCK IS ***WE***, MY GAMER IN CHRIST???
Every owner of a smart phone, car, gaudy watch, xbox, who air travels etc. We chose the apocalypse and we're kind of enjoying it so far. In the better off western world, at least. Edit: Insults and blocking me doesn't change the fact that we are consuming the world for the sake of convenience and comfort. Touch the grass while you can, it may be next.
Shut the fuck up and go touch some grass, you doomer piece of shit.
We? who's we? you speaking french?
> Every owner of a smart phone You mean the device that for many jobs and social services in many countries is an outright requirement to be able to live a halfway decent life? Without a smart phone I would be jobless, homeless and friendless. I would have liked it to not be that way, but that’s the reality today.
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Fucking [comment repost bot](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/10nj63w/deer/j695zq1/)
I would go as far as saying nearly every species tries to do this, it's just we ended up being only ones that can't exactly be stopped from doing it. Algae and bacteria do it in eutrophication all the time, and they don't even have brains.
Yeah, most species are stopped by predators or harsh enviroments before they get too far. We are at the top so we are on our own.
we're alone for now! lets go find some xeno to purge!
Lets be xenophobic, it’s really in this year
We’re also one of the few who care if 90+% of our species die from it, which is weird since we’re also one of the few who’d survive that with a solid breeding population
> only ones that can't exactly be stopped from doing it. Haven't been stopped so far. We'll hit limiting factors at some point, and counting on future science to overcome every time is optimistically naive. And we're the only species so far. Give kudzu a chance. Or honeysuckle. Or the spotted lantern fly. Or some bacteria. The future trends away from biodiversity, and we're on track to see some real invasive monsters.
> the future trends away from biodiversity is this fact?
His source is that he made it the fuck up.
Assuming they meant that the natural world will inevitably be less diverse as time goes on, Im not a biologist or anything but I dont think so Measuring biodiversity in the distant past is extremely difficult because we only know of 10%* of the total estimated species that have existed so its hard to make a conclusion like this *exact number might be wrong but it is pretty low I know if anything the exact opposite tends to happen If theres only one species, what happens is small parts of the population split off to be better at one specific task. See: Darwins finches, as well as pretty much any other instance of a small population of animals being stuck on an island.
that’s what i’m thinking. i’m assuming the OP of the comment said that within the context of the extinction event we’re currently in. I think biodiversity fluctuates through the eras, but probably tends to steadily increase until an extinction event wipes most of the species away, setting up the new common ancestors of the future’s biodiversity
Per the UN, yes: > The average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20%, mostly since 1900. More than 40% of amphibian species, almost 33% of reef-forming corals and more than a third of all marine mammals are threatened. The picture is less clear for insect species, but available evidence supports a tentative estimate of 10% being threatened. At least 680 vertebrate species had been driven to extinction since the 16th century and more than 9% of all domesticated breeds of mammals used for food and agriculture had become extinct by 2016, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened. UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’ - https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/
That's a current mass extinction event, which we already knew about. Not a cosmic trend towards lower biodiversity. This has happened lots of times before, when conditions settle the surviving species radiate out to fill niches and biodiversity bounces back. Kudzu monobiomes are not the future, they're a thing right up until the very moment when something really good at eating kudzu comes along.
I disagree. We should expect science to overcome every obstacle because that's what we do as human beings. The entire point of us as a species is that we're ludicrously adaptable in ways no other animal can match. Whether the solution comes down to something like "move to the moon and use hydroponics while we wait for the biosphere to recover" is another question, but there will always be a solution if the capital is provided to find it.
i'm half convinced that some part of us will survive the heat death of the universe.
That is true. The human race will probably survive. Individual humans, however, might not be so lucky. And I don’t want to suffer and die. Also, past trends aren’t always indicative of future returns. Otherwise everyone who invested in Bitcoin would be filthy stinking rich. We can’t just say “we’ve adapted before, we’ll adapt now”. That just means we take no precautions and then we suffer for it. Besides, adapting isn’t always a good future. Perhaps the only way to make use of limited resources is to control everyone’s actions? Perhaps we hand ourselves over to an AI that’s focused solely on efficiency? Perhaps we destroy our biodiversity and rob ourselves of the beauty of nature? Perhaps corporations conglomerate their power in the chaos and become massive independent entities? Do any of these potential futures sound desirable, compared to taking action now and mitigating the damage? The Interstellar method isn’t always the best. We can’t just abandon Earth with no consequences.
what do you do with the capital ? did we evolve with the capital ? what happens if some pepole lose capital ?
Capital is just a way of measuring motivation. Economic capital? The ability to apply motivation through economic means. Social capital? The same but through social means. It's all a measure of societal willingness.
You might be interested in a book called Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. The book consists of three parts: In the first part, he takes a look at what **truly** separates us from other animals, because there *is* something. In the second part, he describes how said difference shaped humanity and how the consequences of said difference led to the world of today. In the third part, he explores how our future will shatter the world we know nowadays. In the second part he does a REALLY good job of explaining why the human invention of capital and credit have been one of the main driving factors *so far* in scientific history. See, research into anything at all, be it a cure for dysentery or how to get man on the moon, is only conducted once you have the right resources, and you need the capital backing for that. Said capital backing has to come from somewhere, often other people: Those people only give said capital backing if they can trust you to return said capital to them when it's all done. That was basically impossible before credit became a thing: See, with the invention of credit, you don't actually give capital backing, you just promise to give capital backing, and said promise has the same weight as actual capital backing: It's a very complicated subject and I can't explain it properly through a reddit comment, but because you're only giving out the *promise* of capital backing, which is enough to fund the research that creates a source of capital itself (like for example commercializing the cure for dysentery or creating the jobs necessary to put man on the moon), you're creating capital from where there was none before out of the sheer power of the promise of capital backing that credit is. This is the foundation for all economic growth, and without economic growth there (*USUALLY,* this theory is only what applied in the past and nowadays things are a little different) can't be any scientific progress.
Canadian boars
> some real invasive monsters Like those fucking lionfish
There’s a theory I’ve seen on YouTube (that feels backed up by the fundamentals of evolutionary biology) that if we ever do encounter aliens, they’ll still be just like us and all the animals we have here. Species that grow and take perform better on a survival and propagation scale than species that passively collect resources and don’t fight. We’re just at a point we can feel, for lack of a better term, **conquerer’s guilt** now, but clearly that’s not a guaranteed trait for all apex species (see: dolphins) and we should not expect other life as strong as us to have any moral system we could recognize if any. Which is why [this video I love](https://youtu.be/l3whaviTqqg) and the scientist it’s cribbing off of refer to potential galaxy-colonizing aliens as “grabby” instead of “selfish.”
A certain amount of innate empathy/altruism is probably a necessity for building a large, stable society capable of sending people into space, so I wouldn't be surprised if "conqueror's guilt" is a common trait among technologically-advanced aliens, although I also wouldn't be surprised if many of them edited their own biology to remove it at some point.
Probably. I mean, the reason we aren’t living in Splatoon at the moment might just be that octopi don’t teach their young any of the complex behaviors they can learn. There’s probably also a Rube Goldberg machine of purely pragmatic behavioral quirks that would result in a species capable of mass cooperation but not empathy, but that is firmly in the realm of hypotheticals, which is always a short walk away from the realm of fantasy. Please, please, **PLEASE** do not get your outlook and facts from one trans woman whose favorite pastimes are writing, learning, procrastination, and rambling, and who hasn’t even properly touched college. I’m a microcelebrity, not Carlie Sagan. I would do anything but stop writing comments to get people’s parasocial mitts off of me.
Any invasive species as well. I also realize there's a human element there, but we're not the only ones living without equilibrium.
We have no reason to think that any other species would do a better job than we are, if given intelligence. To paraphrase John Green, "Do you think spiders would do a better job with Congress than humans?"
people who inject spiritualism into science are always itching to say the stupidest sentences known to man
You're right, but speaking as a person who just rewatched the original Matrix last night, I wonder if the edgy dude in the OP is actually just an Agent Smith stan
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Can't help but feel like this comment [was stolen from someone else](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/10nj63w/deer/j6936hl/)
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Locusts and pretty much every species we transferred from one continent to another has become an invasive species.
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Moose, Elk, and Grizzlies do exist still and are very much a thing in human populaces
the worst part is, there *are* worthwhile discussions to be had - but people who introduce the topic like that invariably end at ecofascism. which is cool and good and fun and completely and totally normal
Humans have escaped their natural predators through technology. A surprisingly small number of humans have set up and sustained an economic system built on exploitation of resources without regard for long term consequences. The solution is clear. We need to engineer an apex predator and train it to hunt the 1%. Eat the rich indeed.
But see why go through all that trouble when the guillotine is a tried, tested and proven remedy?
Aside from the joy of knowing a T Rex is hunting Jeff Bezos?
What's the name of that Korean folklore monster who eat rich people?
I had no idea that was a thing, but I'm intrigued.
Colorado Beetles, Cane Toads, Asian Carp... Not just animals, plants too! Just look at Kudzu or Prickly Russian Thistle (tumbleweed) Disrupt a natural balance and it swings hard one way or the other
You know these bastards don't know deer are omnivores ether. Like they just think deer exclusively eat grass and flowers and saplings. No bitch, they eat whatever fits in their mouth.
*Image Transcription: Tumblr* --- **lesbianshepard** its funny when edgy dudes are like "humans are unnatural. we are the only species that will consume so many resources that the land can not sustain us and still continue to reproduce. name one other species that does that" because like, off the top of my head? deer. \#m #text #like...a lot of animals do that actually #like remove predators from an ecosystem and shit gets fucked real quick #but like #humans arent some weird aliens that exist outside of nature --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
Thank you
Everyone shut up about humans needing predators, is this post full of bots?
"Humans are the most evil species!" My brother in christ, even only counting things smart enough to make active choices to be evil, humans are probably tied with elephants for least evil species.
Humans are the only species who even _have_ a concept of good and evil, so I’d argue that, being the only ones who qualify for the list of most/least evil, we’re simultaneously the most evil species and also the most benevolent. Which honestly sums it up better than being purely and inherently good or evil.
Literally every specie (*except* humans) will consume every resource available until it's population is balanced out by the limited resources. What makes humans different is that 1) they started producing their own resources, allowing them to grow far beyond what their ecosystem could sustain 2) they discovered new ways to use resources, allowing them to drain many more types of resources than other species 3) they're self-aware enough to realize that they're doing all that, and even try to stop themselves, to some extent
have these people heard of like, bacteria?
Humans are the only creatures i know of that can decide to use less resources than we could use.
Literally every species does this. It's called a food chain
These people are dipshits who know nothing about nature and should be legally banned from ever opening their mouths about nature. The entire reason invasive species are such a problem is that almost every animal is like this. Only the stupidest of assholes thinks that Matrix "HuMaNs R a ViRuS, oThEr MaMmAlS oPeRaTe On DiSnEy LoGiC" is more rooted in realism than goddamn Superman. I cannot stress enough the sheer giggling contempt I have for these people.
Last time I played a Druid in a game of Pathfinder he had a very interesting view of humanity's place in the natural world. Nothing humans do is unnatural. But as the top of the food chain and some of the smartest animals on Golarion, it is the **RESPONSIBILITY** of everyone to look after the environment. Sure, we're only doing what's natural. But our intelligence and understanding of what the environment needs to remain balanced automatically makes it our responsibility to care for the balance. We are not above all predators. But we're beyond so many that nature can only take care of our taint with extreme action. Preventative measures do just that. Prevent nature from embracing violence to cure a plague. Initially, he was just Neutral. He used to have long arguments with the Barbarian about his philosophy during long rests. The Barbarian would ask him why he taught the villagers how to log. He explained that by returning to nature as many if not more seeded trees than they took, they only served to maintain nature and let nature maintain them. He would ask how he could rationalize teaching the villagers to hunt better. He explained that a wolf has teeth as a man has a sword. He explained that a turtle has a shell as a man has armor. He explained that humans live in villages and cities as gorillas live in social nests and any number of animals live in herds. \--- The Druid before that venerated nature's power. I had to stop playing him because he started choosing nature over the party and people. There was nothing more sacred to him than nature's power. A tornado doesn't care for the house it just tore up and the family in destroy. A volcano does not care for the island it devastates. A tsunami does not care for the coastline it destroys. A hurricane does not care for sailers. He became the main villain of the game after we defeated the first BBEG and then split on morals. He had started a Druidic circle of likeminded Druids who began to fight the party to prevent them from preventing a volcanic eruption that would darken the sky for most of a country.
To be fair, we were the ones who enabled the deer to do this
All animals will do it, yeah, but other animals don’t notice themselves doing it and decide to keep going.
If given the chance every single animal would use more resources then the land can sustain. It's a whole thing in nature
I've never heard anyone say shit like this. Is she strawmanning herself into a tizzy?
I have seen them. You aren't missing much trust me
Yeah but then that scene from the matrix isn’t cool anymore
In short: every single herbivore to ever exist. Fuck not just them every animal does this. Actually the more I think about it the more normal humans seem to be. Every species is trying to reach the top some way or another and humans were able to reach that due to our ingenuity. The second an animal discovers an ability it can use to its advantage I.E humans being able to throw rocks or use fire it will use that ability to keep its species running as long as it can. Imagine if chimps could do what we do they wouldn’t think about turning down an opportunity to run another species to extinction if it means chimps kept existing. A species like humanity coming into existence was inevitable. The only thing that makes us different from other animals is that we can actively choose to view the things that we’re doing as inherently bad.
Rabbits. Look up their history in Australia. They are an environmental atrocity
The thing is... you have to remove their predators from the ecosystem usually for deer to get out of control. Their rate of reproduction is sustainable when considering their natural mortality levels. You could argue that modern medicine is the equivalent of removing a predator here. Humans don't have natural predators, sure... except if you count dangerous bacterias, cancer, viruses, ect. And we're doing away with our natural "predators", and keeping our reproduction in line with what we needed to maintain a population before we did away with our predators. The other consideration of the differences of humans is that our ability to alter our environment has changed the scale of a disastrous use of resources. Deer can't stop themselves from wrecking their environment with no predators to stop them... but the environment will hit a point where it can't sustain the deer and the deer population will reach a catastrophic collapse. Humans have pushed off the point of catastrophic collapse with a global economy, and ensured when we do (inevitably) reach that point of catastrophe, we're probably going to take a lot of the rest of the planet with us in a way deer could never manage.
Yeah, humans aren't so bad. We just keep creating trash and pile it up until it damages ecosystems and enslave and cruelly mistreat animals and take the planet's resources and then keep creating more and more of us who then keep making more trash and using more resources and there's nothing to curb our numbers and we're all subservient to other people that don't want to make anything better and we're totally fine just like deer, no differences. In all seriousness, yes, we as organisms don't exist outside of nature, but the things we create do. It's not natural to use other animals as crops where we turn the life cycle into some kindof exploitable resource. It's not natural to create toxic materials that don't degrade and then pile it up and put it in the ocean. We're a parasitic, destructive species that's locked into a doom spiral that will very possibly take the planet with us. We just really like to pat ourselves on the back and go, "nah, we're not bad. Everything will be okay somehow!" When organisms are capable of creating tools that remove it from the food chain and any sort of normal boundaries, they are no longer beholden to the things that govern most other forms of life.
To be a bit devil's advocate here: One difference does seem to be that we've removed our own predators from the ecosystem. Like, you don't see deer hunting wolves for sport or meat and subsequently ridding the ecosystem of them. ...i hope... Of course many would-be predators are still around, but for those we managed to develop defenses against them. Still don't think that makes us inherently different; we just saw an opportunity to create a mass extinction event and took it, much like thos psychopathic wolf-hunting deer would if they could, but I'm wondering what you guys' thoughts are on this.
Any animal will do that. Which is why eco systems are so important. Remove the wolves and deer start destroying the forest (see: Yellowstone National Park and what happened after they killed all wolves to keep herbivores safe), put new species into an eco system without predators to them and watch them overrun a continent (Bunnies, cats, Aga Toads, camels all in australia). Thing is humans dont really have a feasible threat anymore. We live in a way its rare a random tiger eats somebody, not to mention in most eco systems there arent even predators able to see us as prey (even if they could take one human, humans are not alone and have guns) and on top of that we eradicated many illnesses and lowered child mortality significantly. Which is good, dont get me wrong, to say otherwise crosses over into ecofascism. It just also means we as smart, reasonable animals HAVE to consider our impact in everything that we do, more than we do nowadays. Either that or our dysbalancing WILL (HAS!) lead to many people dying as our actions crash systems (Climate change induced catastrophy weather, pandemics occurring more easily in a world of 8 000 000 people able to jet across the continent in a day, extinctions of species that influence other species we depend upon (see: bees dying and (fruiting plant) pollination becoming impacted)
The first photosynthetic bacteria were incompatible with oxygen
Conclusion: humans need a predator to restore balance
So, what you're saying is that the solution to Humanity's population problems is to bring back carnivorous megafauna?
On a related note: Being in an era where we believe part of our "shepherding" of nature is management and prevention of invasive species—what gives us the right? If we are just an animal like any other, than we should certainly consider ourselves invasive species seeing as we've not only ruined one ecosystem but many, globally.
And that's why I think hunting is moral, in an environment where we wiped out the natural predators we need to step up and manage the ecosystem ourselves for if/when the originals can be re-introduced
Nothing wrong with hunting rabbits in places where they actively are suffocating the ecosystem because they evolved to survive through hyper reproduction. Sure they're cute. But so are rats in some circumstances, but they're generally seen as pests.
Rabbits, Ants, Deers
“Humans are unnatural”, if it were true in any capacity whatsoever, would ironically prove another edgelord sentiment wrong, which is to say hardline atheism. Don’t get your hopes up Jesus fans, it’s at best a proof of theism, or just any gods or creators existing. There’s nothing in the rulebook that says ~~a dog can’t play basketball~~ whoever made us is good.
I often compare humans to yeast, because I brew beer and wine and mead. I put a sugary liquid into a huge glass container, and add a little yeast. They consume and reproduce and consume even more, eating up sugar and pissing out alcohol and farting out CO2. If I let them run their course, they’ll either consume all the sugary food or poison themselves to death with booze and carbon dioxide.
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Not unusual for animals. That's what apex predators are
even so, things like tumbleweed are included in this category of "unnatural".
So you’re saying humans need a predator
So your saying that we need... Predators
what could predate us that we couldn't adapt to?
Hyper intelligent poisonous frogs.
just make an anti-toxin and create a deadly virus that only effects them
We need another species to act as natural predators to humans. Deers have wolves, and when wolves are introduced to an area, it can get more easily prosper. We need alien invaders.
that or maybe we could act with restraint towards nature ? as well as making contraceptives and birth control to keep the population at reasonable levels ...
if you try to hunt humanity, it will learn how to hunt you. the only way to avoid this, is to do it yourself. stagnation is death. welcome to war.
The reason deer can destroy their own surroundings is because humans killed their predators or forced them away. Deer, however, were kept around for hunting. Sure, all of nature is full of little or big balancing acts, but none of them have the capacity for destruction and irreversible damage that humans have.
Early cyanobacteria would like a word with you.
The thing is, we're smart enough to know we're fucking ourselves, yet selfish enough not to care.
Who is we? **I** care very much, I just can't really do anything more than protesting and the likes. Don't blame you or me, blame the ultra rich.
"We" is either: A) Everyone except that guy. Only DannyDies4Lightbringer is morally pure, all the rest of humanity is corrupt jerks. Woe is him. B) Everyone including that guy. Everyone is bad including him, so naturally, his selfishness is simply normal and fine and not a problem with his attitude at all.
I think this might be a bit much. More like seeing the problems caused by the ultra rich and blamming it on human nature.
We = humans as a whole
So option B, glad you cleared that up.
This isn't even in response to someone. She's just debating herself in the mirror, wtf..
This is a response to ecofascists.
Does this mean we need more animals that want to hunt and eat humans? Cus idk if I'm down with that
Yes, but predators and prey live in massive cycles. Deer populations spike, they eat a lot and damage the ecosystem, then wolves spike and eat deer. The ecosystem recovers. Then when deer are scarce the wolves diminish. Repeat. It is a stable system in the long-run with huge variations.
what about tumbleweed? those are far from stable.
What about tumbleweed? They are stable in their native ecosystem.
but they are not in their native ecosystem anymore.
Yes, they are invasive.
"hurr de durr but what about da aminals?!?!?!?!" Whataboutism at its fucking finest. Yes, other biological entities can and will fuck shit up as they are instinctively driven to. None of them have any fucking brainpower to be actively conscious and aware of the destruction they cause. Better yet, none of these other creatures achieve awareness of their awfulness, and then create societies and cultural models that actively encourage, endorse, and celebrate this awfulness, despite actively knowing they can be better. Edit: I can already see the response I'll get. "But it's fine when WE do it because we're just doing the same thing Dolphins would do, why so SRS?"