05th anomaly ; video ; open

[dinosize]

Have you ever wondered what comes next? Evolutionarily. After humans.

[ Stephen is in his own cabin, a light and airy space that doesn't really seem to suit him. The camera is propped up on the edge of a sink, where he's washing out blood and dirt from the clothes he wore while out in the port.

He's not really looking at the camera. ]

Do you think humans could ever be a food source for another animal?

Comments

[with_my_teacup]

Take the human off earth and I can think of at least a dozen species that will eat humans unprovoked. Not often that humans hang around to become a sustainable part of the food chain, though. The great human strength isn't weapons, it's the ability to set up shot in a range of climates so wide most animals would die.

[dinosize]

We're very adaptable.

[with_my_teacup]

So far wherever human colonization has put a foothold and kept it, they've been the apex predator or wiped out the competition. But places where they couldn't take control are easy to spot. Abandoned buildings. Bones. No second try.

Nothing's come up on Earth, in my time. But Earth's climate controlled and regulated.

[dinosize]

So humanity only survives as the apex predator. No real threats.

[with_my_teacup]

Basically, yeah. There's no tolerance for real competition. Out on the fringes, survey crews get eaten, fugitives on the run never resurface. But humans make a habitat theirs or they abandon it in my time. Anything that was going to use human as a standard part of its diet is going to have to be real good at space travel.

[dinosize]

Makes sense. Why bother, when you have options.

[with_my_teacup]

My gut tells me anything that could do long term predation on humans would have to be extremophilic or sentient. Maybe both. But a gut instinct isn't science.

...bacteria, maybe, count. Nasty fatal ones that haven't been stamped out most planet-- and those do tend to be extremophiles too. Able to survive sterilization procedures.

[dinosize]

I'd put bacteria in a different category. Doesn't seem to fit in the food chain as we think of it.