If suddenly human civilization disappears from the face of the Earth, what species will become dominant on the planet? Luc Bussier, a scientist at the University of Stirling, tried to answer this question.
There is a nonzero probability that people, having destroyed themselves, will wipe out all living things from the face of the Earth. But there is another scenario, when a person disappears, but other beings do not. What will our planet look like in many, many millions of years, in an era when a person on it has already disappeared?
Many scientists offer their candidates for the role of the future "crown of nature": monkeys, dolphins, rats, tardigrades, ants. According to Luc Bussier, these are unlikely to be relatively developed and large creatures, like the same primates. And it is certainly unlikely that after human civilization, a chimpanzee civilization will reign on Earth - almost like in the movie "Planet of the Apes". The scientist believes that if people die out, then the monkeys will do it earlier. In general, now man is the only primate that is not endangered.
In general, one should not think that the qualities that helped a person become the dominant species on the planet are necessary for all species. In different epochs, completely different classes of living creatures turned out to be "kings of beasts" - for example, dinosaurs hundreds of millions of years ago. And if we were as observers in that era, we probably would never have thought that small mammals that scurry under the feet of the lizards would become the ancestors of elephants and whales.
It is practically impossible to make a forecast of the development of living nature for such a long period, first of all, because it is impossible to determine the changes to which this or that species will undergo in the process of evolution, which we have chosen for the role of "dominant". So maybe this species will be ants - but we cannot predict which hybrid of beetle, spider and crab they will turn into. Only one thing can be said with certainty: whoever disappears from our planet, bacteria will clearly make it the last.
