Who would win: every human in the world vs. every animal in the world?

TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 59 points –

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?

72

Look around you, we're winning, and we're not even trying. We are literally in the midst of a mass extinction event driven by human behavior.

Maybe roaches will outlast us, but we're headlong into make this planet pretty unlivable for almost all species, let alone ourselves.

Yes, we are defeating non-human life without trying. if we were trying I imagine we could make quite a dent.

but if the animal kingdom was trying, I think that would be pretty terrifying.

Looks menacingly at nature

"Imagine how much worse it would be if we were trying."

I feel like the animal kingdom tries literally all the time. Women being eaten by snakes, whales attacking boats, dogs killing babies, etc.

Even if they made a coordinated effort, they'd merely take us by surprise for a moment and then we'd kick the shit outta them once we realize what's happening. First of all: we have weapons.

I've had significantly more animals run away from me than towards me.

I think ants alone could pretty much wipe out humanity tbh. If they targeted the food supply chain and power grid, I'm not sure how much we could really do about it.

They might do a bunch of damage at first but then we’d spray vast quantities of pesticides on everything.

We're also killing humans almost just as well. If we tried harder to kill animals, we'd kill more humans too.

What about a swarm of disease carrying rodents that when bite cause severe illness

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Fungus comes in the outside challenger and beats us all

We won. Not even close.

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.

Mosquitoes are the only thing that kills more humans than other humans. In fact, if you look at the top 10 animals that kill humans and add up 2-9s per year totals they're a bit less than mosquitoes. Also the list is very bug and parasite heavy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to_humans

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.

Could you survive by going somewhere that bugs can't? Can any bugs survive extreme cold?

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.

Depends on the conditions. Is it a wall of death where both sides charge at each other and fight to the death? Do the animals communicate and strategize, or just gain a sudden bloodlust for humans and march at us?

If the animals were able to coordinate, I would worry about a giant ant golem stomping through cities.

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.

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

Flowering and fruiting plants generally need bees, birds, etc. for pollination and seed spreading.

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

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.

Animals could fight a really good long game. Especially species that reproduce very quickly.

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

Mostly by accident, imagine what we could do if we were trying to kill everything off.

If weapons are allowed, we would win by a landslide. If no weapons are allowed, even then I would think the animals would just start killing each other before they even get to us.

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

ha, one species defense/offense vs everything nature has in its current inventory for defense/offense?? and a biomass that makes us look like a rounding error?

on the other hand, were doin a dandy job killing the planet so maybe we will win a stupid prize

You know that meme about having immortality but if a snail catches you then you die? There's a snail out there in the real world that can actually kill you.

Animals win.

Is a snail an animal? Because if this question put spiders and bugs etc into the animal category theres nooooo way humans survive a single month of fighting. Just imagine for example the deadly mosquito squad that could be sent all over. How could we survive against anything like that, mice might be hard enough, but small bugs you dont see, theres just no way.

If we make it strictly mammals, we definitely have a fighting chance.

If it's alive and not a plant, not a fungus, and not a single-celled organism, it is probably an animal.

Given that the vast majority of animals in the world are now domesticated and cattle, we already won.

You are either vastly underestimating the number of species on the planet, or vastly overestimating human domestication practices.

https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-species-are-there

Only if you go by number of species. If you go by actual biomass our livestock accounts for 60% of all mammal biomass. Wild mammals only make up 4%. The rest is humans.

I think diversity is going to be the animals' biggest advantage. Stopping a pride of lions is completely different from stopping a swarm of mosquitos. We'd die off faster than we could protect ourselves from EVERYTHING.

Humans would not be able to annihilate all the animals, given how many live underground/in deep oceans etc., and how integrated they are into our own lives leading to an unacceptable risk of collateral damage. However, the animals would be completely ineffective due to a lack of cohesion and ability to coordinate attacks. So basically humans would kill some of the animals and then it would devolve into a stalemate.

I'm sure we could nuke the planet or something and leave a few survivors in space.

This question reminded me of the old series Zoo. What happens when animals band together against man...first two seasons were decent enough

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?

Every animal wins there’s like a billion bugs to a person at the moment

What if it's a free-for-all? That is, all members of the animal kingdom attack us, but natural predation still occurs, so for example, if a bunch of insects swarm us, the birds and frogs will still eat them.

Killing all the animals would kill us, so we die either way; I don't think killing all the humans would have a negative effect on animal life.

So I am thinking the animals probably win. Certainly if they can strategize. But either way we lose.

Humans absolutely. Our ability to create tools to kill will always be better than what animals are limited to by genetics