Bed bugs.
Positive outcome would be no more having to burn contaminted possessions (or wash them in very hot water many times).
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Asklemmy
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I was going to go with the rabies virus, but bedbugs is a solid choice as well.
Viruses are not animals.
Viruses aren't even alive in the technical biological sense
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Yeah I think any human-specialized parasite is an easy choice. Head lice? Fuck em.
I know you said that we shouldnβt say humans but Iβm 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 π€¦ββοΈ 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?
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Humans are the only species that would ask a question like this with ecologically damning effects. So, yeah.
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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/
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Ticks and mosquitos.
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Bedbugs. That's a terrible thing to happen to anyone.
A wave of them swept through my old apartment once almost six years ago. I still freak out at the smallest itch or bump.
Those bastards cause serious trauma
I had them about a year ago. I've never been the same either. A tiny black speck on the floor that is from my socks, or a fruit fly, can send me into hysteria.
The best thing you can spend money on IMO is a bedbug proof mattress encasement and those interception cups for the legs of your bed. Nobody will ever regret doing that. It can happen to anyone, right now Paris is rife with bedbugs.
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Canadian Geese, the animal that Canada stored all its rage inside and sent to battle the United States
If you got a problem with Canadian Gooses, you got a problem with me, and I suggest you let that one marinate
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Most positive effects on the planet but not humans?
Cattle, they're a major source of greenhouse gasses, as are all the industries built around growing, processing, and transporting them.
I hate to say it, but getting rid of mosquitos would probably have bigger consequences than that. The females are the only ones sucking blood, the males on the other hand help pollinate plants, exterminating them could potentially affect our food production lines...
... But not gonna lie I'd still genocide the fuckers, ecological damage be damned.
You don't need to eliminate all mosquitos, just the ones that bite people.
There are dozens of different species of mosquitos, and not all of them bite people. If you get rid of the ones that bite people the others will likely still fill in as pollinators for those that are no longer competing with them.
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Pandas. I mean, they really don't seem like they want to exist in the first place. And China get's to finally shut up about them.
they really donβt seem like they want to exist
Alternatively, they're at peace and content with their existence. At least that's what it seems like to me, goals really
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I'm off the opinion that no animal would be beneficial to remove. In almost every instance where we have exterminated a species there has been negative unanticipated consequences. Even mosquitos and bed bugs, there are predators that eat them and subsequent predators that eat them and so on. It's kind of like the butterfly effect. It's a balance formed from eons of coexistence that is not to be tampered with. There is so many examples where scientists try to introduce an animal to exterminate another that has gone horribly wrong. Regardless of my opinion, all living things have a part in our world. I'm not a vegetarian btw, but I do use Arch.
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Mosquitoes
Mosquitoes are pollinators. Sucking blood and being annoying is only a small part of their functionality.
Cockroaches... as far as I'm aware, they don't contribute anything to the eco system, they're just pests.
Unfortunatelly, not even a nuclear war can erradicate them π.
'Cockroach' encompasses a wide range of species, the majority of which have no interest in living in a human's home, and contribute to the work of decomposition on the forest floor. Many smaller predators also eat them.
Just learned recently that there are over 3000 species of cockroaches and about 10 are invasive to humans.
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I think I'm going to go with Africanized honeybees. My understanding is they're a man-made calamity, so pressing the delete key on them wouldn't like, upset the circle of life and piss off Mufasa or whatever.
Tics. What's their use in nature anyway?
Hard to say. Mosquitos, is probably not one of them because even as much as we hate them, many animals prey on them, so unless other insect replaces them as a food source for those animals, them disappearing would probably affect many other species and subsequently, other species that may feed or depend in some form on those that feed on mosquitos.
My answer would probably be ticks, since I don't think there's many animals that feed on them and their only usefulness is population control, which should be doable by other species either way.
Edit: bed bugs as well, since it was mentioned by other commenters, I hate those fuckers and last I checked they weren't any animal's primary food source.
I remember reading some scientic article that examined what would happen if we eradicated the mosquitos entirely.
Surprisingly, they came to the conclusion that they'd just be gone and we would be a lot happier without the nuisance and the diseases they spread.
No other species is dependent on mosquitos as a food source, they could easily find enough to eat with them gone. Mosquitos apparently serve no known vital purpose in their ecosystems, although it was mentioned that males of some species have some little value as secondary pollinators.
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Ticks and botflies. We don't need maggots making a home in our skin. Even worse is what they do to animals like sheep.
Mosquitos are mainly an annoyance to me and I can deal with them.
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The poisonous (not venomous) grasshoppers that eat plants to death but nothing eats them.
Really it is people, though.
honestly any insect that primarily feeds on blood would be good to go.
- mosquitoes
- bed bugs
- tics
- fleas
screw all of those things
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