You know you're old when...

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Only too accurate, Mr Pampling.

“It must be true, someone tweeted it to me/I read it on the internet/I read it in the paper/Fred down the pub said so”.

I’ve been thinking for years that what will finally finish us off is the planet itself – it’s been trying to rid itself of us over the years, and one day it will succeed. It will come up with a number of things at the same time that we can’t cope with, and once we’re gone it will carry on its merry way and start a whole new dominant species experiment. The problem for us is that we keep trying to help it achieve its goal, so we accelerate our own demise.

start a whole new dominant species experiment.

I wonder how long it will take. I think it probably depends somewhat exactly how you define a “dominant species.” I suspect that for most of geological time, no particular species has been dominant to anything approaching the extent that we have been for a while now.

I wonder how often it happens, to any particular level of dominance. And how long it typically lasts.

Mostly because other species have lacked the co-operative gene and just major on competition. Watch out for the dolphins…

You have far more confidence in your understanding of what dominance even means, never mind what species might have had what capabilities in the distant past, than I have in mine. (Or than I have in anyone else’s, for that matter… 8~)

Don’t worry, dolphins won’t really dominate – they lack the ability at the moment to come out of the water! But given time I think there’s a fair chance that something else will rise above the rest – maybe some other great ape, if we’ve left enough of them alive. Brains, planning, co-operation, tool use, communication, dexterity and self-awareness are the main attributes that I think would be required, but who knows what could evolve given enough time and the lack of human activity.

You know you’re old when your favorite childhood cartoons end up on Boomerang…

they lack the ability at the moment to come out of the water!

Coming out of the water is probably over-rated and anthropocentric anyway. The volume of the oceans is vast compared with the surface area of the land times the few feet vertically the bulk of the terrestrial biosphere occupies. Hell, we can’t even fly without extravantly energy-consuming machinery and consequently don’t really occupy more than those few feet to any great extent.

Octopuses are pretty dextrous, and probably have the other attribues you mention. I don’t think any of the great apes are likely to survive anything that does for us, but as you say, who knows what might evolve? But the existence of a dominant species like us is probably an anomaly, really.

probably depends somewhat exactly how you define a “dominant species.”

Indeed. We’re vastly outnumbered by bacteria, viruses, and ants. And as current events are demonstrating, sometimes they have power over us. We’re not an apex predator (we might, in groups, be able to devise technology to alter the world in massive ways, but individually? individually quite a number of equally individual animals would consider us “dinner”), we’re not at the top of the food chain either.

So we are “dominant” by virtue of our ability to act amongst each other to get stuff done, by virtue of a high degree of abstract thinking so we can imagine something to be a solution to a problem, and by having the ability to use both of these to bend the world to our will. Cities, bombs, and airplanes.

But, a mere human? A mere snack. The only way we “win” is an unfair fight.

but who knows what could evolve given enough time and the lack of human activity.

Cats with opposable thumbs.
Fear that. Because once they can open their own tins of cat food, they won’t have any reason to be nice to us any more.

once they can open their own tins of cat food

But why would they put their food in cans in the first place – fresh is better – especially if you’ve just caught and played with it… :@)

Fresh is better, but cans give instant gratification.

The three management members of this household seem to know that cow and sheep are not natural food items so the acceptable provender is chicken (sometimes) and fish, fish, fish and fish. ¹ Or baby rabbit, but only the crunchy skull bit…

Since tuna is high on the list I predict evolved cats will employ² deep sea fishers.
Oh, and available flavours of canned food will include baby bird.

¹ Yes, it’s a meme.