Bed bugs.
Positive outcome would be no more having to burn contaminted possessions (or wash them in very hot water many times).
Bedbugs, hands down.
Only good bug is a dead bug.
I'm doing my part!
I know you said that we shouldn’t say humans but I’m gonna say it anyway:
Humans.
Sorry.
Would be interesting to tally up the negative impacts of removing humans as well.
Culls of invasive species would no longer occur, which would be detrimental in those ecosystems.
A fairly significant number of endangered animals probably only exist today due to human intervention and breeding programs (i am well aware that we probably made them endangered in the first place)
Cross breeds would be done as well, Ligers and Mules require humans for breeding. Although in fairness they are definitely not natural to begin with.
Many animals we have domesticated would be done for as well, most smaller dogs are completely, reliant on humans for food and grooming. Many cats would be okay, but some breeds are likely dead ends as well. Jersey cows would probably have a bad time as well, without milking, sheep might have issues as well?
Interesting thought experiment.
Yeah, this is a good topic. I can add a few:
Short term, pets in houses, farm animals, etc will need to escape and start fending for themselves otherwise they'll starve (or dehydrate).. Oops, I'd somehow missed an entire paragraph of your post 🤦♂️ Sheep need us to trim their wool, because we've bred them up grow fair more than they need. They'll get too hot if they don't have problems with defecation first (an actual thing farmers have to worry about).Medium to long term, when dams and dikes aren't maintained they'll eventually fail, flooding vast areas including the Netherlands.
I guess that the world will continue heating for a bit even once we're gone, so we wouldn't be around to theoretically use our tech to help. Obviously, we're the reason it's happening in the first place, but nature's not equipped to deal with change that's this rapid.
Good point! Within a few weeks billions of animals would die. Chicken, pigs, cows, cats and dogs.
We definitely need to clarify what "good for the planet" means if we want to decide on the best answer.
Humans are the only species that would ask a question like this with ecologically damning effects. So, yeah.
I'm going to provide one very important reasons it would be disastrous to the ecosystem if humans were suddenly deleted from the Earth: what happens to the many currently active nuclear reactors? And what happens when Chernobyl's sarcophagus finally corrodes entirely and exposes that radioactive blight to the entirety of Europe and central Asia? Probably nothing good is the answer.
Ticks.
They seem to just make everything worse, and I don't think anything only eats ticks. Not to mention the diseases they carry.
Possums eat ticks. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make, ticks are awful.
Possums don't live exclusively on ticks, they don't even particularly have a penchant for eating ticks. There was just one study that showed they could eat ticks and potentially have a resistance to some diseases.
Edit: sauce - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34298355/
Possums sure can eat some other bug/arachnoid don't need those vermin.
Ticks and mosquitos.
Do they make everything worse in ways other than disease?
I don't think they have much effect on the flora of an area, but humans are not the only fauna that are harmed by ticks.
Also they get in my dreams and I usually have at least one tick related nightmare a year, so please do understand I speak with some hyperbole.
Canadian Geese, the animal that Canada stored all its rage inside and sent to battle the United States
If you got a problem with Canadian Gooses, you got a problem with me, and I suggest you let that one marinate
Cobra Chickens are one of nature's wonders. Leave them alone!
How dare you. I live for seasonal goose fly bys
And Finland...
Bedbugs. That's a terrible thing to happen to anyone.
A wave of them swept through my old apartment once almost six years ago. I still freak out at the smallest itch or bump.
Those bastards cause serious trauma
I had them about a year ago. I've never been the same either. A tiny black speck on the floor that is from my socks, or a fruit fly, can send me into hysteria.
The best thing you can spend money on IMO is a bedbug proof mattress encasement and those interception cups for the legs of your bed. Nobody will ever regret doing that. It can happen to anyone, right now Paris is rife with bedbugs.
My room mates/tenants in my basement spotted 2 bed bugs and we have gone full nuclear on them because we are all terrified of them. Like they've replaced everything soft, rubbed the sprays into the carpet, and I made a salt circle with d earth around their entrance.
We also keep quoting aliens (nuke it from orbit, only way to he safe) and Starship troopers.
I fear water and bed bugs as a home owner.
You should also run every piece of clothing and bedding you own through the dryer, and inspect your mattress seams, and get bedbug mattress encasements.
First we ban DDT, then Pizza Hut releases Stuffed Crust, then bed bugs make a resurgence. It all fits.
Most positive effects on the planet but not humans?
Cattle, they're a major source of greenhouse gasses, as are all the industries built around growing, processing, and transporting them.That would be such a boon for the planet. The biomass of cattle (that is, if you piled them all on a scale and got their weight) far surpasses the biomass of wild mammals. All wild mammals, land and sea, combined. (They're only about 4% of total mammal biomass.)
Cattle, and the things you describe, are the result of human intervention...
I hate to say it, but getting rid of mosquitos would probably have bigger consequences than that. The females are the only ones sucking blood, the males on the other hand help pollinate plants, exterminating them could potentially affect our food production lines...
... But not gonna lie I'd still genocide the fuckers, ecological damage be damned.
You don't need to eliminate all mosquitos, just the ones that bite people.
There are dozens of different species of mosquitos, and not all of them bite people. If you get rid of the ones that bite people the others will likely still fill in as pollinators for those that are no longer competing with them.
Only the females of a tiny fraction of species, and only when they need to produce eggs, stuck blood.
I'm off the opinion that no animal would be beneficial to remove. In almost every instance where we have exterminated a species there has been negative unanticipated consequences. Even mosquitos and bed bugs, there are predators that eat them and subsequent predators that eat them and so on. It's kind of like the butterfly effect. It's a balance formed from eons of coexistence that is not to be tampered with. There is so many examples where scientists try to introduce an animal to exterminate another that has gone horribly wrong. Regardless of my opinion, all living things have a part in our world. I'm not a vegetarian btw, but I do use Arch.
Mosquitos are also pollinators.
Pandas. I mean, they really don't seem like they want to exist in the first place. And China get's to finally shut up about them.
they really don’t seem like they want to exist
Alternatively, they're at peace and content with their existence. At least that's what it seems like to me, goals really
but they cute though
They’re too lazy to even reproduce.
Mosquitoes
Mosquitoes are pollinators. Sucking blood and being annoying is only a small part of their functionality.
Cockroaches... as far as I'm aware, they don't contribute anything to the eco system, they're just pests.
Unfortunatelly, not even a nuclear war can erradicate them 😒.
'Cockroach' encompasses a wide range of species, the majority of which have no interest in living in a human's home, and contribute to the work of decomposition on the forest floor. Many smaller predators also eat them.
I think I'm going to go with Africanized honeybees. My understanding is they're a man-made calamity, so pressing the delete key on them wouldn't like, upset the circle of life and piss off Mufasa or whatever.
Tics. What's their use in nature anyway?
Chiggers. Fucking hate those things.
That is a dangerous word to say
Lol yep
They're so bad at my camp in the swamp, I have to bathe in bug repellent, and I still get 3-4. Without? I won't even try.
Once it dips below 40F sometime in October, or probably November, it's safe until April.
Hard to say. Mosquitos, is probably not one of them because even as much as we hate them, many animals prey on them, so unless other insect replaces them as a food source for those animals, them disappearing would probably affect many other species and subsequently, other species that may feed or depend in some form on those that feed on mosquitos.
My answer would probably be ticks, since I don't think there's many animals that feed on them and their only usefulness is population control, which should be doable by other species either way.
Edit: bed bugs as well, since it was mentioned by other commenters, I hate those fuckers and last I checked they weren't any animal's primary food source.
I remember reading some scientic article that examined what would happen if we eradicated the mosquitos entirely.
Surprisingly, they came to the conclusion that they'd just be gone and we would be a lot happier without the nuisance and the diseases they spread.
No other species is dependent on mosquitos as a food source, they could easily find enough to eat with them gone. Mosquitos apparently serve no known vital purpose in their ecosystems, although it was mentioned that males of some species have some little value as secondary pollinators.
Definitely mosquitoes.
honestly any insect that primarily feeds on blood would be good to go.
- mosquitoes
- bed bugs
- tics
- fleas
screw all of those things
The poisonous (not venomous) grasshoppers that eat plants to death but nothing eats them.
Really it is people, though.
Ticks and botflies. We don't need maggots making a home in our skin. Even worse is what they do to animals like sheep.
Mosquitos are mainly an annoyance to me and I can deal with them.
You can deal with them?? That would be FANTASTIC. I will pay you.
The bats would miss them.
Any change to the biodiversity on our planet will have a negative effect. What is a pest to you is food for another species, or a pollinator, or any of dozens of valuable purposes.
They're not just a pest to all humanity, but dogs and other animals as well because they can carry a parasite known as heart worm. I'm sure there are a bunch of other terrible diseases they carry as well.
Bats aren't solely dependent on mosquitoes either. For all I car they can find something else to eat.
When you've seen family members you love suffer from dengue, malaria or whatever other fked up shit they spread, it becomes personal.
Parasitic worms
I haven't vomited in years, but the concept of those things makes me feel like I'm gonna
Mosquitos. Also bedbugs. Any insect that feeds on blood really
Same for me, mosquitoes. Those pesky little buggers!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Disease carrying mosquito species
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
cattle.
but preferably keep the wild ones
Australians would say emus
Emus would say Australians.
Wasps. Their stings hurt like hell.
None. And we’re hurting badly from the ones that have already been removed.
Flies
They are so annoying
Flies serve many roles in nature. They help spread beneficial bacteria and mushroom spores. They are also food sources for various small animals, insects and arachnids. Sure they are annoying and creepy, but they have a place.
Tiny (and some of them are absolutely minuscule) flying daredevils that can zoom in three dimensions through wild air currents to avoid your hand every time and land wherever they please? Nah, I respect flies. They're... perfected.
Wild hogs. They're invasive, they're spreading like crazy in Prairie Canada and Midwest USA.
I got some bad news for you...."Super pigs" — called the "most invasive animal on the planet" — threaten to invade northern U.S.
The UCP
Tapeworm
Humans. Can you imagine how happy all of nature's spicies would be to get rid of this murderous polluting ravaging selfish disease of species called human? All animals to start to breath clean air, restore their trees and natural habitat, slowly recover their climate, and the fish thriving without plastic , toxic waste and oil pollution. It is the best animal to delete for positive outcome no other choice comes close.
Don't think ya read the prompt.
I like the thought of an animal that already existed, terrifying, gruesome and truly terrible. But we humans were given a wish to extinguish a single type of animal from the face of the earth. And so we whose. And all memory of this horror from the dark was lost as it was cast into oblivion and humanity was relieved from its existence. Now all we are left with are in comparison cuddly squeaky companions of the animal kingdom and all is well, even the animals are glad to got rid of the horror. And now you ask that question when everything truly necessary was already done and now we ponder which one is the worst when all is well.
Kangaroos
Humans
All the people saying humans in this thread are the reason humans should be deleted.
Beavers. Just the mere sound of rushing water triggers their damn building instincts (scientists tested this). Just let the environment be itself.
Beavers create wetlands where other animals thrive. Plus wetlands are carbon sinks.
Btw even if it wasn't intentional this is the funniest thing I've seen today, "damn building instincts" had me in tears.
I'm sorry if this is rude, I'm glad we had a pleasant exchange.
It's not rude, I laughed a bit too. Damn autocorrect.
Pidgeons
Edit: surprised about how many people enjoy birdshit on their cars and home windows
Who should clean cities and subways from dropped food then? Rats?
Orange cats
