Gaby
We usually measure dominance by tools, language, culture, and the ability to reshape the environment. That view is anthropocentric, valuing what humans can do while overlooking what humans cannot do. The planet can exist without human intelligence; bacteria outnumber humans in both quantity and mass. They have colonized much of the Earth and will likely remain long after humans vanish. For 99.9% of the time that life has existed on Earth, the planet thrived without human intellect. So if humanity disappeared, there’s no strong reason to assume something else would simply take its place.
Octopuses and dolphins are highly intelligent, but life in water largely precludes the use of fire or electricity. As a result, they couldn’t refine metals or build machines. For land life to evolve similar capacities would take around 100 million years. Baboons are among the leading contenders to replace humans. In the meantime, primates already living on land would find it much easier to adapt to a post-human world. Baboons, which live alongside humans in parts of South Africa, are social creatures with intelligence comparable to chimpanzees.
ScienceFocus suggests that immediately after humans go extinct, baboons could seize human settlements and eat the food and livestock left behind. That would probably trigger a sudden population boom. When the easy food runs out, these animals could still benefit from shelter in human buildings. They might even start using some of the metal tools and knives humans left behind. That could give baboons an edge over other primates and predators. Complex machinery would rust long before baboons figured out how to use or repair it. But thousands of years later, the presence of refined metals and plastics might let them begin their own technological development.
