I’m thinking the animals would easily defeat us, since trying to get all 8 billion+ humans to agree on a plan of attack would be a near-impossible task. By the time we’d be done trying to coordinate a plan, I figure the lions and cheetahs would have already devoured us, not to mention the larger animals like the elephants.

Even so, I think we shouldn’t underestimate the smaller creatures like rodents and insects. Most of them carry diseases, so if they came in large numbers, they could easily wipe out a good percentage of humans.

However, if humans were allowed to use the military’s weapons, like tanks and canons, I think we might have a fighting chance. But if we went straight to using the nukes, it would result in no winner since the whole planet would die.

Would the animals win, due their sheer numbers and combined strength? Or would the humans win because of our combined intellect and vast knowledge of the animal kingdom? What do you think?

  • Psaldorn@lemmy.world
    9·
    6 个月前

    Ever seen ants disassemble a much larger animals carcass?

    Imagine trying to keep millions of angry ants out of your house, not imagine they have support from spiders, racoons, birds.

    Throw in dropping snakes down chimneys.

    Bees stop pollinating our crops, larger animals could take our dead and drop them in our reservoirs. Cities are done.

    You might like the TV show called “Zoo”, it looks at some of this and gets pretty crazy

    • AnalogyAddict@lemmy.world
      2·
      6 个月前

      It’s not like bees pollinate for our benefit.

      There’s a reason animals run away from the monkeys with pointy sticks. We eliminated the ones that don’t until we got comfortable enough that we had the luxury of turning them into various forms of entertainment, and therefore had a reason to preserve some.

    • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
      2·
      6 个月前

      I take it you’ve never watched The Naked Jungle. I actually didn’t know that was the name of the movie until now. Not the best name. Anyway, it’s about millions of ants destroying everything in their path and a cocoa plantation owner trying to save his property from them.

    • RandomVideos@programming.dev
      2·
      6 个月前

      If our lack of cooperation and intelligence are mentioned as a disadvantage and an advantage, i dont think its fair giving the other team cooperation and the knowledge of how to defeat us

    • FUBAR@lemm.ee
      2·
      6 个月前

      Yep I read that the combined biomass of ants outweigh the combined biomasss of humans

  • sasquash@sopuli.xyz
    6·
    6 个月前

    If they team up and act coordinated, animals should win pretty easy. You would be attacked immediately by thousands of insects and a lot of birds when you step outside. They could poison water and food sources and attack the electrical grid. Large mammals would be our smallest problem. Imagine coordinated moscito attacks and small bugs crawling into your home through every small gap by thousands. Thx for the nightmare. Reminds me of the Birds from Hitchcock.

  • weariedfae@lemmy.world
    5·
    6 个月前

    If you include insects and arthropods and everything suddenly turns into uberbloodlust-kill-all-humans then non-human animals win, hands down. I think people overestimate their ability, the effectiveness of weapons, and the sheer number of insects that are near you at all times. Insect biomass alone outstrips humans by an insane margin. Very few mammals or other animals would get a lick in, I think. There is no hermetically sealed bunker that would hold for long, and that won’t save you from the mites already on your skin although they probably can’t do a ton of a damage.

  • MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works
    4·
    6 个月前

    Do viruses and bacteria count? Antibac resistance is building. I imagine a virus that fritzed our brains would give animals some advantage.

  • Paragone@lemmy.world
    51·
    6 个月前

    We’re already IN the 6th great extinction: humans ARE exterminating the marine & terrestrial ecologies.

  • tobogganablaze@lemmus.orgEnglish
    4·
    6 个月前

    since trying to get all 8 billion+ humans to agree on a plan of attack would be a near-impossible task.

    We wouldn’t need even close to that many humans. Just a couple of million people (the size of a medium-large military force) with the proper funding could probably kill off all of the large to medium animals within a few decades.

    Killing of all the arthropods would be more tricky and we probably couldn’t completley eradicate them just because we wouldn’t be able to find them all.

    Of course that’s purley for winning in a direct confrontation. Without any animals we’d probably go extinct not long after, so it’s not really a win in the end.

  • RandomVideos@programming.dev
    3·
    6 个月前

    I think humans would have a hard time winning if animals have homo sapiens on their side

    If the animal team wouldnt include humans, would anyone win? If nukes were launched, even if no human on Earth was able to live, there are still people in space that would at least be able to survive for slightly longer, but would that even kill all the insects? How could humans even kill every single animal? How would the animals kill all the humans? It would be easier humans to coordinate than for animals and if the goal for the humans is survival and killing, would the animals be able to counter any strategy humans try?

  • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    6 个月前

    If this means that every animal immediately goes berserk and tries to kill all humans, and ‘animal’ includes bugs, then the animals probably win.

    Those people in relatively secure places without enough animals when it starts could survive, but there’s probably be 50% or higher casualties among the general human population in less than a day.

      • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        6 个月前

        I don’t think ‘going’ anywhere would be an option. If you’re in basically, most of the civilized world, and not in a very secure structure, you’re immediately fucked. I said more than 50% but I guessed that as a very conservative estimate. We don’t normally realize just how many living things are around us, mostly bugs, but also small rodents and the like. If every one of those within a significant radius of every human suddenly went berserk and wanted the humans dead, most people are not in areas where the number of attackers would permit much survival.

        Those who currently live in certain desert environments, in certain cold environments, and so forth, would probably survive the first day, and then might have a hope of making it longer. But most environments in which there isn’t enough animal/bug life around to immediately kill you present serious other problems such as food supply. If you live at McMurdo Sound Antarctica, you’re probably not going to immediately be killed. But you will soon have issues feeding yourself and keeping warm.

        People in Iceland or northern Norway and other similar places might have the best chances. Probably not quite enough things around to kill everyone immediately, but the environment is one in which they might be able to become self-sufficient, but in the long term I have my doubts even for them. If the bugs and animals and such are so focused on killing humans that they no longer perform their normal functions, then you’re looking at immediate and total ecological collapse. If they’re not, then the population of bugs and animals will increase in all areas other than the most extreme environments, and sooner or later what few humans survived in those extreme environments are going to have to attempt to emerge.

        If humans had prep time, maybe. Assuming we could get over our normal difficulties cooperating and actually prepare for the event. There’d at least be a lot of survivors. But if it came as a surprise, suddenly someone flips a switch and the entire animal kingdom is trying to make every single one of us dead? We’re pretty much fucked.

  • tate@lemmy.sdf.org
    2·
    6 个月前

    After we win, we’ll all starve to death. I’m not even saying that we have to eat animals. I’m saying that without animals there would soon be no food of any kind.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      01·
      6 个月前

      I guess this guy’s never heard of humans being omnivores or that you can get protien from certain plants.

      I mean, it’s not like we’re in an open system powered by the sun and the only way any of us actually get energy is because plants can synthesize solar energy and then mammals and other types of animals then eat those plants taking the energy they have converted, and now these animals convert energy from the plant into energy for themselves.

      But yes, somehow, plants will cease to exist and functionally not be edible. /s

      • tate@lemmy.sdf.org
        2·
        6 个月前

        The kinds of plants we can eat cannot continue to thrive without animals, especially insects around. The whole system is interconnected.