In an infinite universe what's the real difference, humans vs mammals

You were talking about survival and if we are talking about survival then wouldn't the numbers matter?

Try consciously killing a single bacteria living in your gut.
Anyway if we are talking about success of a species as a whole bacteria are far more successful than us. We can wipe out billions of them but there will be billions of billions more of them.

Leaving aside bacteria and moving onto higher organisms rats and roaches have done remarkably well even though we have tried to wipe them out and if we wiped ourselves out in a nuclear war those guys are likely to still be around.

As I stated earlier we've been waging war against rats for most of our history and the rats are doing pretty well. Same with roaches. Also as I noted earlier given that we actually aren't very hardy and don't breed prolifically and biologically aren't very adaptable its unlikely that we could survive a nuclear war whereas those roaches, rats and etc could. Its quite likely a nuclear war would be a great thing for them since it would remove competition for resources.

Again it depends on how you determine dominant. We have the most advanced technology but in terms of longevity of species, hardiness and numerical superiority we aren't even close.

 

1) In a state of war, yes, numbers matter. Take this example: If there are more banana trees than humans, that doesn't mean banana trees are better at survival. It just means we didn't decide to wipe them out. Which we could.

2) Again, it's fine that there's trillions of them. But we can kill them when we like. They can't kill us based on a conscious decision. Clearly, this would be far more important to an alien.

3) You're saying that if the world got together in a joint effort and tried to exterminate them, we couldn't? The truth is, it's not worth the effort it would take, so in the meantime we're just doing what we can (keep out of homes, etc).

4) Again, if we had to, we could go underground as well and survive just fine. Also, the damage caused by an ALL OUT nuclear war which destroys everything would surely wipe them out too because there would obviously be nothing to eat, right?

Dominance means you can impose it when you want. A good example, coincidentally, is a dominant basketball player. He will cruise all game and then impose his dominance on a game when it becomes necessary. At the moment, we are that dominant player.

 

There isn't much of a difference between us and mammals, as we are too mammals.

But the fact that our brains allow us to execute a higher level of reasoning, thought, and compassion...would probably pique an alien's interest over the other animals on this planet. As a direct consequence of our brain's functioning, we have been able to construct great civilizations...something a monkey or whale would never be able to do in the forseeable future.

 

The best way to answer this I guess is "what would I expect to see if I went to THEIR planet?"

 

I disagree, we do not rule the world, We think we rule the world.
I saw the discussion between Mathloom and Rocketsjudoka. But Insects also have more reason to say the rule the world. There are much more insects species then Mammal species(including Humans), there are much more individual insects then humans, there is much more biomass insects then biomass humans. Insects are better at survival then humans. We cannot kill al insects even if we tried. Insects have immense cities just as we do (just look at termites and ants). So why do we rule the world and not them?

And to include the nuclear war, many insect species would survive such a war, us humans would. Insects have been here long before us and will be here long after we are gone.

It depends on how you define a civilization, we just look at human civilizations, we are not interested in how insects lived 200 years ago.

 

arno_ed,

You're saying that if all humans got together and decided to destroy all insects, we couldn't? We can't detonate every single chemical, biological and nuclear weapon and finish them off? How do we know this?

Also, are we assuming that if a coackroach is sitting ON the bomb, it would not die? Because I believe what you guys are referring to is the ability of roaches to withstand radiation - that doesn't save them from the direct impact of a blast.

Grenades? DDT? Set the whole world on fire. In fact, if you destroy their habitats, they would dissapear.

The argument to be made, perhaps, is that at this time, we cannot destroy them all without destroying our own habitat in the process.

 

You are right that if we destroy the planet we can destroy insects. An insect cannot survive a blast of a bomb. However if we do that we are also destroyed. But without destroying ourselves we cannot eliminate all the insects. Like i said they have been here longer than we have and they will be here longer than us. Because of the short generation time and high numbers insects are much better in dealing with a changing world than humans. They can mutate and adapt much faster.

 

Given Earth's history and their biology we likely can't wipe out cockroaches. They have survived several extinction level events on par with nuclear war such as the giant asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Rats might be wiped out by a nuclear war but at the sametime rat like creatures also survived the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs too. Bacteria and viruses have survived for billions of years. Keep in mind we have been trying to eradicate these type of pests for almost the whole history of humanity and we can't even keep them out of our houses.

As far as if everyone else died in a nuclear war the rats and cockroaches would be able to survive quite well on the remains of those who died and like every other extinction event eventually new animals and plants will arise which the rats and cockroaches will gladly eat.

 

In the immediate blast zone insects couldn't survive but we don't have enough nuclear weapons to turn the whole surface of the Earth into an immediate blast zone. Also there have been insects found living very very deep in the Earth where they would be safe from blasts and there are insects that have been found who can tolerate radiation very well and right outside of the blast zone there are likely going to be lots of insects surviving.

 

I'm pretty sure life can live on after nuclear winter. We could too, albeit in a genetically damaged form.

The question is whether those descendants would still carry our mantle of "first prize for alien contact" if they don't share the fruits of our civilization.

 

That's actually just about the worst way to approach the question, as it presupposes an anthropocentric answer. As humans, of course we are more likely to identify with the most human-like creatures we come across. The problem is we have no idea whether these hypothetical aliens are anything like us at all.

 

http://www.bartos.de/wp/wp-content/t***.jpg

 

That's a great point. If they were spacefaring octopi they might look for the octopi first instead of pesky primates.

 

That is a good argument for human dominance. :grin:

 

Humans are extremely adaptable. And today's cities rats depend on humans to survive - they have likely evolved by now to live off of human waste.

But it's hard to think of any multicellular organism that can survive in both the cold of Antarctica and the heat of the tropics, from sea-level to 20,000 feet in the air. Hard to think of any besides a human. Not even a dog could last in those extremes without humans. Should also be noted that humans don't really have a competitor for resources.

We'd likely survive any kind of natural or man made catastrophe save the detonation of a dooms day device or an encounter with a massive extraterrestrial radiation (gamma burst or radiation belt). But those kinds of events might end all life on earth - even bacterial.

 

Ehh, sorry but that just isn't true.

The city rats have showed us how adaptable they are, if the humans would suddenly disapear they would have no problems adapting again.

We are capable of living in those environments as a result of our technology. If the energy sources dry out the human race will not be able to survive these conditions, we depend on resources that will eventually dry up. Arthropods are much more adaptable than humans. A dog might not be the best example for ultimate survival animal. Like I and other posters have stated before Arthropods (like insects) are a much better example.

Humans in no way will survive any catastrophe were all other life on the planet ends. That is just a false statement. We are a resourcefull specie, and we have been able to colonize many different habitats. Of course we are one of the dominant species on our planet. But we are not a species that will outlive all the other species of animals, like I said especially many insect species will outlive us.

 

Aren't there people living in space?

Couldn't they survive something that wipes out life on Earth and repopulate?

Would be a bummer if there are no fertile women on the ISS.
Granted, anything that takes out life would take forever to clear up and the ISS won't support people for years/decades/centuries. But we can cheat the survival game, in principal.
.

 

If we want to destroy all life on the planet we really need to destroy the planet (literally). So we would not have a planet to go back to. But in that case we did survive the other animals on our planet. However since we aren't on the planet anymore we are not the most dominant species on the planet :grin:

Actually the best way to counter my arguments are that humans are a species, and insects are a class. So it is an unfair comparisment. There isn't a insect species as dominant as the human species. But like I said the class of insects is more dominant than the class of mammals on this earth

 

I think the ability for cockroaches to withstand radiation is way overrated. It is an urban myths, like the idea that a Twinkie would survive a nuclear war. Cockroaches can stand more radiation than people, but they are pretty average for insects. Mythbusters did a segment on it:

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As far as I know, the hardiest organisim on the planet is Deinococcus radiodurans. For some context, according to Wikipedia 10 grays of radiation is 100% lethal to humans. Dienococcus radiodurans can survive 5,000 grays with absolutely no long term effects. In the Mythbusters segment above, 100 grays is 70% lethal to cockroaches.

 

True.

We're still most visible though. Even if they see something which they identify with, they would eventually see us killing and eating it (example: octopus).

There's defintiely way too many variables to consider to make a detailed argument.