I’ll just edit instead!
Bed bugs.
Positive outcome would be no more having to burn contaminted possessions (or wash them in very hot water many times).
I was going to go with the rabies virus, but bedbugs is a solid choice as well.
Bedbugs, hands down.
I know you said that we shouldn’t say humans but I’m gonna say it anyway:
Humans.
Sorry.
Would be interesting to tally up the negative impacts of removing humans as well.
Culls of invasive species would no longer occur, which would be detrimental in those ecosystems.
A fairly significant number of endangered animals probably only exist today due to human intervention and breeding programs (i am well aware that we probably made them endangered in the first place)
Cross breeds would be done as well, Ligers and Mules require humans for breeding. Although in fairness they are definitely not natural to begin with.
Many animals we have domesticated would be done for as well, most smaller dogs are completely, reliant on humans for food and grooming. Many cats would be okay, but some breeds are likely dead ends as well. Jersey cows would probably have a bad time as well, without milking, sheep might have issues as well?
Interesting thought experiment.
Yeah, this is a good topic. I can add a few:
Short term, pets in houses, farm animals, etc will need to escape and start fending for themselves otherwise they’ll starve (or dehydrate)..
Oops, I’d somehow missed an entire paragraph of your post 🤦♂️ Sheep need us to trim their wool, because we’ve bred them up grow fair more than they need. They’ll get too hot if they don’t have problems with defecation first (an actual thing farmers have to worry about).
Medium to long term, when dams and dikes aren’t maintained they’ll eventually fail, flooding vast areas including the Netherlands.
I guess that the world will continue heating for a bit even once we’re gone, so we wouldn’t be around to theoretically use our tech to help. Obviously, we’re the reason it’s happening in the first place, but nature’s not equipped to deal with change that’s this rapid.
Yes, most of those we created through breeding, but you could argue that wolves and coyotes created modern deer the same way.
I do wonder if many would go extinct in the medium term from predation, before they can evolve fast enough to adapt; I’m thinking farm pigs and chickens would be OK in the short term - they don’t need us to survive - but wild dogs/coyotes/wolves, large cats like the NA lions, raptors, foxes… they’d all be putting a lot of pressure on those mostly defenseless breeds. Pigs are not wild hogs. Cattle and horses exist just fine in their environments without humans. Even with predation, herds are large and they aren’t defenseless.
Sheep are an exception; like you said, they need us to perform maintenance because of how we’ve bred them. Are there others?
Ooh, thanks for the suggestion. Seems its on youtube as well. Thanks!
Link for anyone else interested: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLob1mZcVWOagLL-shJOp-d5_qJOG2MvCJ
I’m going to provide one very important reasons it would be disastrous to the ecosystem if humans were suddenly deleted from the Earth: what happens to the many currently active nuclear reactors? And what happens when Chernobyl’s sarcophagus finally corrodes entirely and exposes that radioactive blight to the entirety of Europe and central Asia? Probably nothing good is the answer.
I would be willing to put money on “likely nothing” being the answer for active nuclear reactors. They’re highly automated from a safety perspective these days. I’d be more worried about chemical plants
Oh come on, really? Is the problem ultrarich people? Or is the problem poor people who won’t eat those ultrarich people?
Landlords
Ticks.
They seem to just make everything worse, and I don’t think anything only eats ticks. Not to mention the diseases they carry.
Possums eat ticks. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make, ticks are awful.
Possums don’t live exclusively on ticks, they don’t even particularly have a penchant for eating ticks. There was just one study that showed they could eat ticks and potentially have a resistance to some diseases.
Edit: sauce - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34298355/
