If these animals hadn't gone extinct, how would they fare today?

DValdron

I'm just glad we got them before they got us. They were definitely up to something.

Besides, it was an accident. What happened was that the human race was at a bar, quietly minding its own business, and these other species, they just barged in there pushing and shoving. Well, somebody said something, and then it got out of hand, and suddenly humanity had a knife in its hand and there was blood all over the place. What I'm saying is, it was self defense. They had it coming. Hell, now that I think of it, humanity probably wasn't even there. It was someone else, Australopithecus or Homo Erectus. Never trusted those guys.
 

saint polype

DValdron said:
I'm just glad we got them before they got us. They were definitely up to something.

Besides, it was an accident. What happened was that the human race was at a bar, quietly minding its own business, and these other species, they just barged in there pushing and shoving. Well, somebody said something, and then it got out of hand, and suddenly humanity had a knife in its hand and there was blood all over the place. What I'm saying is, it was self defense. They had it coming. Hell, now that I think of it, humanity probably wasn't even there. It was someone else, Australopithecus or Homo Erectus. Never trusted those guys.
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In fact Neanderthal can provide an alibi for humanity, if you must know they were at home interbreeding at the time...
 

Arkenfolm

Speaking of passenger pigeons, the effect of their disappearance on the ecology of the eastern US is pretty interesting. It's pretty obvious that when you remove a species that once numbered in the billions from the ecosystem, you'll be changing things up big time. There's evidence that the spread of Lyme disease increased when passenger pigeons went extinct. Though I think you'd need a whole set of practices to save them, since their species seems like it would be fated to die out if there were any less than a few hundred thousand individuals. They could easily be extinct in the wild if they were to survive at all.
 

saint polype

metalinvader665 said:
Speaking of passenger pigeons, the effect of their disappearance on the ecology of the eastern US is pretty interesting. It's pretty obvious that when you remove a species that once numbered in the billions from the ecosystem, you'll be changing things up big time. There's evidence that the spread of Lyme disease increased when passenger pigeons went extinct. Though I think you'd need a whole set of practices to save them, since their species seems like it would be fated to die out if there were any less than a few hundred thousand individuals. They could easily be extinct in the wild if they were to survive at all.
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Wasn't there also the issue that people would shoot them down by the millions just for fun (kinda like they massacred bisons from rolling trains) ? Could that potentially be avoided?
 
oshron

oshron

i've heard that the reason there were millions and millions of passenger pigeons was actually a consequence of the Indian Genocide, and that before the Columbian Exchange there were far fewer of them. the population boomed because of a more general ecological imbalance caused by colonization and that's why suddenly there were flocks big enough to blot out the sun, which in turn led to the idea of "we can hunt as many of these as we want, there's no way they'll be completely wiped out". i haven't been able to find much to corroborate that, but i've figured based on that that the pigeons could survive in much smaller numbers, getting back to their apparent pre-Columbian levels thanks to an early conservation movement, probably one spearheaded by Teddy Roosevelt himself
 
oshron

oshron

Achaemenid Rome said:
Whale cavalry? Whale-drawn artillery? The possibilities are endless.
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not everything can be domesticated. a key factor to being able to domesticate something is that it breeds and grows up relatively quickly, which is why cats, dogs, and horses and the like have been domesticated but, so far, elephants haven't. elephants have been tamed, not domesticated, which is on an individual level, not a species level. you're not gonna be taming any kinds of whales.
 

Achaemenid Rome

oshron said:
not everything can be domesticated. a key factor to being able to domesticate something is that it grows and breeds and grows up relatively quickly, which is why cats, dogs, and horses and the like have been domesticated but, so far, elephants haven't. elephants have been tamed, not domesticated, which is on an individual level, not a species level. you're not gonna be taming any kinds of whales.
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Whale-drawn artillery was a joke. I thought that was obvious.
 
oshron

oshron

Achaemenid Rome said:
Whale-drawn artillery was a joke. I thought that was obvious.
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yeah, i only realized that after i'd posted :p i left my post up to make my point clear vis a vis domestication vs. taming

also, i'm embarrassed i didn't realize you'd replied to me for two whole days :p
 
Alpha-King98760

Alpha-King98760

saint polype said:
The premise is to pick an animal species which has been hunted or otherwise pushed into exinction by humans in our timeline and somehow have it survive well into the 21st century, probably by sheer luck.

How well would they do now? Would their population stabilize, would they firmly remain on the list of threatened species, would they still be among the first to go extinct eventually?

I would think a lot of arctic species could still be around today if passing ships hadn't relied on them for provisions quite so aggressively. If steller's sea cow or the great auk survived that era of sea travel, even if just hanging on by a thread, then I could easily see them become "normal" arctic species to us like walruses or polar bears. Stil severely threatened, perhaps, especially by climate change, but far from fading into distant memory as they are in our timeline.

On a sidenote, do you think that extinction at the hand of humans is a "meritocracy", meaning that if a species dies out, this necessarily means it has been more fragile than other species in the first place? So for instance, in no timeline coild the walrus go extinct before steller's sea cow, unless something truely bizarre happens.
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I don’t think people in South America would like terror birds.

jonathan-kuo-terrer-bird-low.jpg
 

wtw

With Ice age animals you would have to figure out how they went extinct in the first place, if it was man, disease, starvation, climate change or some combo did it. Any animal that died from man alone could survive if man allowed it. I think animals that could be in more remote locations could make it, but any near large swaths of humanity are gone and island populations are just to vulnerable.
 

wtw

ManuJM1997 said:
Well, does it have to be 100% proved, or can be a "Pretty much proved"?
Because the latter, pretty much all megafauna would be included:
- In Australia, we would talk of giant marsupials like Diprotodon and Thylacoleo, and giant reptiles like Megalania. New South Wales and Queensland would be the only places I could see them persist
- South America, Ground Sloths, Giant armadillos and wonders like Macrauchenia or Toxodon, with familiar faces like camels, sabretooths and mastodons
- North America, a faunal diversity that dwarfs Africa: Mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, armadillos, bison, camels, horses, and predators like American lion, Sabertooth and the Short Faced Bear
- Europe, the big loser, would be now populated by template megafauna, that during the Ice Age refuged in the Iberian Peninsula: Short-tusked elephants, rhinos, hippos, auroch, horses etc
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For North America horses and camels maybe, horses more so all others due to the various factors I mentioned previously. Although horses and camels still suffered the same fate I believe that they may have been around if you could take away one of those factors
 

Emperor-of-New-Zealand

The thylacine only went extinct because farmers assumed they were livestock predators. While livestock predation did likely occur, it's widely agreed that the effects were massively overblown, and efforts were made to preserve the thylacine in the late 19th Century (efforts that sadly failed). If we can get a captive breeding programme going, in Australia and Britain/Europe, then the thylacine can be saved.

The quagga was actually the nominate zebra species (Equus quagga quagga). All other plains zebras (like the Burchell's zebra, or the Grant's zebra) are actually subspecies of the quagga.
 

Dylan Hooton

I wondered if the moa of New Zealand and/or even the giant elephant bird of Madagascar could have been saved from extinction.

Anyway, I've been fascinated by alternate histories having Diprotodons surviving the extinction possibly caused by man, so if man never spread wildfires across Australia, then Diprotodons would still be alive today as the world's largest marsupial (even beating the grey/red kangaroo as the largest), living in forests and wetlands across Eastern and Southeastern Australia. Imagine seeing Diprotodons alive today in, not only in the wild, but also in zoos and safari parks instead of as fossils in museums. :)
 

Arkenfolm

Dylan Hooton said:
I wondered if the moa of New Zealand and/or even the giant elephant bird of Madagascar could have been saved from extinction.
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Probably not. They made for good eating, and their eggs and young were easy prey for introduced animals like rats. Small moa species might have survived, though. A TL here, Lands of Red and Gold, features a moa species being saved from extinction by being imported into the private preserve of Australian Aboriginal nobility. Maybe New Zealand have earlier contact with the outside world might allow an Indonesian ruler to import some chicks and eggs to do a similar feat, and even if his kingdom falls, future rulers enjoy the site and take the moa for themselves. Not sure how well they'd fare in the tropics, though. Getting them to roam free like Pablo Escobar's pet hippos (now invasive in Colombia) would be helpful, even though they're very vulnerable to predation by humans or animals that live alongside humans. At least they wouldn't have to worry about Haast's Eagle though.
 
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