Planet of the Rats

[Anonymous No.9781882]

If another extinction event happens which leads to the end of humanity, it is likely Brown Rat would evolve to fill a variety of niches, including strains developing into a fully sapient species. They are intelligent, highly social, extremely adaptable, flexible in diet and breed prolifically (thus meaning that new genetic variations have more opportunities to emerge and can more rapidly spread through the genepool).

[Anonymous No.9781915]

>>9781882
Rats are parasites that live off the White Man's gibs. Without a grain permaculture they'd be back to eating seasonal berries and ducking predators, as it should be.

[Anonymous No.9781921]

>implying a hawk or even a chicken wouldn't rekt the shit out of a faggot rat

[Anonymous No.9781993]

>>9781882
You are assuming there is some arrow in evolution that points towards sapience. There is not. Life lived a long time before we cropped up -- if evolution "wanted" to fill the super-adaptable intelligent social animal niche as a goal, we'd have been the most recent of many, not the first. (By "we," I also mean our near cousins who more-or-less got there. too.)

IF any species after us happened to wind up there, rats would be a likely candidate -- in addition to the traits you cite, they also have sort of a "pseudo-thumb" in the pad of the forepaws that gives them better manipulative ability than a lot of animals.

On the other hand, they have very short lifespans -- that would seem to mitigate against developing a culture, since it takes TIME to learn the rules and norms of any culture (hence the very long time we spend as "children," learning how humaning is done. That takes us longer then rats live their entre lives.)

[Anonymous No.9782415]

>>9781882
Read "After Man" by Dougal Dixon.
Rodents (which are not just rats) are adaptable and breed quickly. They're good candidates to fill many of the newly opened ecological niches.
There'd be equivalents of sheep and cattle and tigers.
No guarantee intelligence would evolve again.

>>9781993
Your arguments are all good -- except the final one. An intelligent species has to have at least some minimum mass in order to support a brain with the requisite number of neurons.
So we're talking a LONG time. Tens of millions of years, at least. Our great-granddads were short-lives shrews and we made it. The point is that you don't go directly from OP's image to this one.
All the physical adaptions -- radiation and diversification, including larger size and longer life would happen first. And then maybe, maybe, you'd have a chance of getting smart rats. Intelligence is the LAST niche to be filled.

I'd also add that Man is among the larger animals. Obviously, we don't compare with bears or elephants, but there are thousands of smaller species to every one that's bigger than we are.
As >>9781921 noted, a 10 lb. "man" (if it could exist) would spend more time running and hiding than developing Civilization.

[Anonymous No.9782980]

>>9781921
That's the thing, a chicken would not fight A Rat. It would fight Many Rats. And one way they would fight would be to eat their eggs.

[Anonymous No.9782990]

>>9782980
Birbs can be quite social too and they’re very intelligent. However wings are such a great adaptation they might not need to bother developing anything more

[Anonymous No.9783054]

>>9782980

[Anonymous No.9783094]

>>9783054
that is mice, not a rat, faggot

[Anonymous No.9783132]

>>9783054
My ancestor :)

[Anonymous No.9783186]

>>9781882
Had pet rats my entire life, OP.
Honestly, more clever than our dog and way cuter. God, I fuckin love rats. Anyone who can’t appreciate rodents for what they are and can do should fuck off

[Anonymous No.9783206]

>>9783186
i killed them for my dissertation. psychology. cute. but one bit me so i fucked him up. they gave me a caution. he died.

[Anonymous No.9783209]

>>9783186
working with marmosets next.

[Anonymous No.9783210]

>>9783054
Anyone else feel good when they see mice get fucked up?
I go out of my way to save trapped lizards in my house and to avoid stepping on ants but seeing little rodents like that get obliterated just feels good, why is that? Some sort of instinct thing?

[Anonymous No.9783211]

>>9783210
no, you're just a sociopath

[Anonymous No.9783215]

>>9783211
fair enough