It's a sobering thought, but a little misleading as most of us do feel we are special in some way, even if we can't put our fingers on it. This discussion reminds me of Stephen Jay Gould's essay on the modal bacteria, reminding us that bacteria win hands down in terms of biomass, as Mike said. But we're certainly capable of fouling up on a scale that no other species can rival. It's too early to say what the results of that will eventually be, since we've only been doing it for a length of time that's negligible by usual evolutionary standards. It may be best to summarise by saying that the particular kind of superiority that we have - mental - makes us the only species that can actively manipulate its own evolution.
Well, this has all got very metaphysical. But we're quite capable of dying out by making the whole planet uninhabitable, and taking many other species down with us. We're not likely to be outcompeted by any other species in our niche. What we can say is that our intelligence has given us whole new ways to wipe ourselves out that the "lower" animals can only dream about. rex's physical superiority guaranteed it survival after the Big Rock Of Doom hit. Then again, it's no guarantee of success - any more than T. The question goes on, "Does that mean that humans, being superior to everything else, will be caught up or wiped out?" I don't know of any theory that the very fact of mental superiority on the part of humans will cause us to be at a disadvantage. Then again, you don't have to be humanocentric to think that humans are in some positive senses superior to all the other species we know of: we are certainly way ahead of them all in terms of culture, art, and (most pertinently to those of us who run this site) the ability to do science. And as the questioner implied, yes, I do think that the emergence of humans is (considered from the point of view of biodiversity) "a flaw in evolution" - it could hardly be otherwise given the rate at which species are going extinct right now, most of them as a direct result of things we're only able to do because of our superior minds (e.g. Of course it's true that lots of molluscs beat us in terms of species longevity, many bacteria beat us for total biomass and so on, but even with all that said, it seems clear what the questioner means by "superior", that is, with a greater ability to affect and even deliberately manipulate the environment to the detriment of other specieis. I am inclined to think that the "humans are not superior" responses are a bit on the Politically Correct side. These are the traits that are seen as being important to humans, so that's what we consider to be superior to other organisms as well. Thinking is what we do well, along with talking and making things. We tend not to think that being able to fly is an important ability, since we can't do it (although wouldn't you feel a bit superior if you could?). Humans are actually pretty rubbish, even though our population is rocketing.ĭon't forget that as humans we tend to think that human traits are particularly good - it's how we perceive our importance in a social context.
Anthrenus beetles are far superior to Pandas in that case. If you consider the number of individuals capable of reproducing within a species, their global distribution, their generation time, how long they've already been around and the number of their near-relatives (members of subspecies for example) you can probably make a guess at the likelihood of that species continuing to exist or having descendants. That means that any organism living on the planet right now is pretty ok. If a species has surviving members or descendant species it can probably be considered superior to species that are extinct and have no descendants. Superior is a very difficult concept in terms of species.
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