Asklemmy @lemmy.ml

1y ago

Why can't we delete stuff?

I'll just edit instead!

220 comments

Bed bugs.
Positive outcome would be no more having to burn contaminted possessions (or wash them in very hot water many times).
- I was going to go with the rabies virus, but bedbugs is a solid choice as well.
  
  Viruses are not animals.
- Yeah I think any human-specialized parasite is an easy choice. Head lice? Fuck em.

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.
  
  Life After people. Whole series exploring this
  
  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.
  
  I would be willing to put money on "likely nothing" being the answer for active nuclear reactors. They're highly automated from a safety perspective these days. I'd be more worried about chemical plants
- Humans are not the problem. Ultrarich people are.
  
  Oh come on, really? Is the problem ultrarich people? Or is the problem poor people who won't eat those ultrarich people?
  
  removed

Landlords
- They're not human, I'll allow this.
  
  You sound just like someone from Nazi Germany.

Ticks.
They seem to just make everything worse, and I don't think anything only eats ticks. Not to mention the diseases they carry.
- Ticks and mosquitos.
- 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.
- 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
- How dare you. I live for seasonal goose fly bys
  
  I do honestly love hearing the honking and watching them fly by. I always point it out to my kids. I've seen lots of Canada geese in my life and they've never hissed at me, so I don't have a problem with them other than the poops that are just everywhere.
- If you got a problem with Canadian Gooses, you got a problem with me, and I suggest you let that one marinate
  
  The thing about Canada geese for me is the weird little poos. I don't mind the aggression, the flocking behavior, or any of the other antisocial nonsense that they've adopted from their namesake country.
  It's the poos. They linger around for weeks.
- Cobra Chickens are one of nature's wonders. Leave them alone!
- And Finland...
- Canadian geese, Australian Emus, sounds like there's some interesting AI image ideas here
  
  What have Emus ever done to you??? :(

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.
  
  Yes.. But then more humans will survive by avoiding certain diseases, which as a result, will produce a worse environmental outcome
- Only the females of a tiny fraction of species, and only when they need to produce eggs, stuck blood.
  
  Minimize their numbers as much as you want, but that won't stop me from having to deal with them in almost every single day of my life.

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.
  https://www.wired.com/story/paris-bed-bugs/
- 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.
- absolutely
  https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
  https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000010
- 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...

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.

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.

Mosquitoes
- Mosquitos are important pollinators and have a very important place at the bottom of the food chain.
  
  Surely something else can be eaten. And there are many species of mosquito that do not eat human blood. I think we can nuke the species that does and still get by.
  Perhaps I'm under informed here.

Deleting all mosquitoes would have a significant impact on the environment, many birds and spiders mainly prey on them. Delete just mosquitoes that bite humans. It's a much narrower range and wouldn't affect the environment as much.
- Similar insects would quickly fill the niche.

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.
  
  OK, just the pest ones then 😁.
  
  Just learned recently that there are over 3000 species of cockroaches and about 10 are invasive to humans.
- They are extremely important for getting rid of dead things. Everything contributes to the ecosystem, except invasive species, OP's premise is impossible to begin with.
  
  Like really? Even pest cocroaches, they eat dead flesh 🤨? Cuz I thought they only went after good food (not rotten).
- One of the proposed explanations for the recent explosion in bed bug populations is the fact that pesticides have become more effective at eliminating cockroaches, which are predators of bed bug eggs
  
  Hm 🤔... you know, I've seen roaches in the bathroom as well, and I always wondered what they were doing there, like there's no food there. Apparently, if food is scarse, they'll eat almost anything, dead human skin included.
  In that case, I guess they're not that bad. Sure, they should be regulated, cuz of deseases and all that, but living in a bubble is not good as well... for the immune system I mean.
  OK, you've convinced me, I'm giving up on the roaches 😂.
- I think they're a good diet to some insectivores.
  
  Cats hunt them sometimes... I mean, some cats 😁.

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.
- Maggots are the things that breakdown dead stuff, without them you'd have dead animals and plants rotting on the ground for ages while the bacteria breaks them down slowly. I think the whole world would smell worse.
  
  These are maggots that get laid in your skin specifically. Look up "bot flies"
  Fungi do most of the rotting anyway.
- You can deal with them?? That would be FANTASTIC. I will pay you.

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.

If you gave any random person god like powers to do whatever they wanted, they would immediately eradicate mosquitoes as their first act.

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.
  
  That's interesting. With how many of them there are and knowing that many species eat them, I would have expected that at least some of them would suffer in some way.

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.

Tics. What's their use in nature anyway?

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.

honestly any insect that primarily feeds on blood would be good to go.
mosquitoes
bed bugs
tics
fleas
screw all of those things
- Particularly disease-carrying mosquitos have been assessed to be unimportant to ecosystems. Although, it's worth noting that outside of those few species, they don't primarily feed on blood, but rather nectar. They take blood once during their reproductive cycle.

Definitely mosquitoes.

The poisonous (not venomous) grasshoppers that eat plants to death but nothing eats them.
Really it is people, though.

Parasitic worms
I haven't vomited in years, but the concept of those things makes me feel like I'm gonna

Same for me, mosquitoes. Those pesky little buggers!

Whatever shit's been preserved in the permafrost that's bound to come back.

Mosquitos. Also bedbugs. Any insect that feeds on blood really

Mosquitos are the largest killer of people in history. Getting rid of them would have a massive positive effect.

Australians would say emus
- Emus would say Australians.

None. And we’re hurting badly from the ones that have already been removed.

cattle.
- but preferably keep the wild ones

Humanity OFC-- oh you said not to say humans... Shit.
- How nice would that be if humanity stopped existing...

Disease carrying mosquito species
- 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.

Obviously worms in general are needed, but any big group of mainly parasitic ones I could happily delete without a second thought. Ideally let's also destroy any records of their existence.
- I could do without those hammerhead fuckers. They're invasive in our area, eat the regular earthworms, and really hard to kill.
  
  Regular earthworms are also invasive in my area (as they are in most of the eastern US) so it's one problem solving another problem I guess

I feel like a reasonable but controversial answer to this is cows
- Cows are awesome. Go pet a cow sometime, they're extremely affectionate and just super chill.
  
  just super chill.
  Lol, they can be, they can (and do, several times a year in the UK alone) also stampede and trample a human/s to death quite easily (but also very deliberately. Edit to clarify - the stampede part is deliberate, I don't think the cows are necessarily homicidal lol).
  Sure, they normally only do this when they feel threatened, but all it takes is a small dog nearby, or for the cow to have a calve you might not even see, and it's in defence mode.
  I'm not trying to frame the cows as the problem, but this idea that they are docile animals you can just do whatever around (like people are literally paying money to "cuddle" cows) is wrong and dangerous. They are wild animals that are bigger and stronger than us, and should be treated as such.
- But why cows?
  
  It's an understandable answer that kind of misses the point. Cows are an incredible strain on the environment because of how fucking many of them humans breed in order to abuse and murder. But deleting cows would just prompt people to breed and abuse a different animal so it wouldn't help that much
  
  Methane and total acreage needed per cow

Wasps. Their stings hurt like hell.

Wasps.
Fuck wasps.
- Wasps are crucial pollinators, and predators for millions of other poisonous, venomous, deadly bug and animals (including other wasps). Ecosystem surviving the sudden loss of all wasps is questionable.
  
  I place my faith in the collective power of the Beehive.
- You can pick a fight with a wasp and win it. But mosquitoes sneak up on you and once you notice the little bastards it's already too late.
  
  I'm going to choose not to pick fights with wasps. Haha
- No figs for you

Flies
They are so annoying
- 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.
- 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.

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.

If I had to choose one I’d choose one of the ones that’s already going extinct so I could disrupt as few ecosystems as possible
Alternately, is there an invasive species that harms the ecosystems it invades and doesn’t have a non-invasive counterpart? Maybe domesticated cats?
- Alternately, is there an invasive species that harms the ecosystems it invades and doesn’t have a non-invasive counterpart?
  ~~humans~~ fuck

The UCP

My dog. Nobody's gonna miss his awful farts or massive shits.

Tapeworm

Kangaroos

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.

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.
- Nature will never be happy. Nature will always be tearing itself apart. I vote "all animals" for deletion.

Seagulls. These fuckers shit on everything, they scatter your garbage all over the place and they're noisy.
And these tiny black insects that are small enough to get into picture frames and computer screens. Fuck then.
And that Brazilian penis fish that swims into your urethra. That im thing is just the stuff of nightmares.
- That fish thing is a myth, it's never been proven to have ever happened.
- Seagulls are fine, it is people who leave trash out that create the problem

All the people saying humans in this thread are the reason humans should be deleted.

Humans

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