An unpleasant but possibly necessary hypothetical question ?

Question

One of the beauties of this Q/A site is you're free to ask all kinds of questions - some you might not want to ask, but feel you have to and are more comfortable asking from a forum like this.

I love animals dearly, but another question has occurred to me after my last one:-

In view of various viruses that have plagued the planet recently and the mass culls that followed, in the interests of the NATURAL BALANCE OF NATURE, has anyone posed the hypothetical question that if we were to systematically destroy every last animal on earth, apart from just leaving insects and microscopic life, what would be the end result?

E.g. certain animals have adapted to the way we live and either learnt to live with us and even help us live, over and above being livestock (some intimately like cats and dogs), or inspite of us. Some occasionally attack us, when too much of their territory is invaded or for other reasons.

What I want to know is - would nature SENSE this and fight back & how ?

Obviously some of you are having trouble with the concept of hypothetical in other words what scientist make computer models for IMHO. However, those of you bright enough to understand the question and the reason for it have given some very interesting and illuminating answers to the question so far - especially the 'cause and effect ones' - For the not so bright among you - the question I feel needs to be asked by the scientific world if they haven't already in order to establish the parameters by which we should 'conduct' ourselves as we are sharing this plant with the rest of life here and countenance whether we are keeping within the parameters or exceeding them and thereby threaten our OWN existence as some of the answerers have so far alluded.

Answer 1

If most animal food-sources were eliminated from earth, humans would have to rely primarily on plants for food, probably augmented by insects.. We know this is possible, since many people are vegans. Not all plants would survive such a major ecological change, but lots of them would--especially since insect pollinators would still be around. Insects as pests could become a huge problem for agricultural efforts though, since some of their normal predators would have become extinct. Human populations would likely decline--not because nature "sensed" a problem and fought back, but because we have adapted to the environment as it is, not the environment we would create by eliminating other animals from the earth.

Answer 2

Insects would dominate the world and become our major food source. Following the food chain above the microscopic level, insects eat vegetation and animals, animals eat vegetation and insects and we eat all of the above. Eliminate the animals and the insects will eat all of the vegetation forcing the majority of us to live on a bug diet. Despite what most people believe, people and technology are the current dominate natural force. Will we reign as long as the dinosaurs?

Answer 3

Think about it this way:
Every time we kill a species of animal, another species will wipe out because of lack of food.
Eventually, it will be either an insect dominated world or a human dominated world. It can't be both; both us and the insects have to eat. So we could be eaten, or we could eat the insects.
The winner.... rules the Earth...

Answer 4

The entire structure of our world would change. All plants and animals are interconnected. Animals help keep insect populations under control, plant growth under control, etc. The world would become uninhabitable for humans. We can try to kill off all the other animals, but we'd be killing ourselves.

Answer 5

Some of us are having difficulty in understanding this question: because it is a poorly written question. Furthermore, this section is titled "Earth Science and Geology" because it is about (gasp!) Earth Science and Geology. Your question belongs in the Biology Section, or maybe in the Philosophy section. Please restrain yourself in the future and keep your questions to Earth Science and Geology.

Answer 6

Nature always finds a way. Always for the better too, no matter how harsh it can sometimes be.

Answer 7

Nature is the only absolute certainty in life - it will do what it needs to do to preserve itself.

Answer 8

who would want to kill all the animals on the entire planet?
sounds sortof like a stupid question IMHO

Answer 9

Remember, you are an animal too.

Answer 10

No!