A video posted on Facebook caught my attention and I'm shocked to say the least. This video imagines a world where humans one day simply cease to exist. I admit I'm a sucker for these kinds of thought experiments.
It starts of accurately in my opinion. Then it proceeds to paint a picture of a more beautiful Earth. Towards the end, the narrator even suggests that it could be a new Eden. This really gets under my skin for several reasons. The first is that in practically all other scenarios where other species suddenly go extinct (bees, snakes, frogs, flies, wolves, lions) the end result is always unfavorable. It always ends up with a chain reaction that sees the extinction of other species as well. This is actually one of the first things we learn in ecology - Nature abhors a vacuum.
That means when humans are taken entirely out of the picture, the world will indeed change and not necessarily for the better. The video, while not stating it outright, implies that no other organism depends on humans. It even mentions one organism that may actually depend on humans - mosquitoes and then states that mosquitoes will be fine as they consume plants as well. It was at this point I knew this was bogus.
While it's true that mosquitoes eat plants as their primary food, the pregnant females are the ones that need blood for their babies. Now, I'm unsure of whether they need human blood for this matter but I can say that many animals do depend on human conservation efforts for their survival. Also, almost all domesticated animals do in fact rely heavily on humans to take care of them. The grasslands of Australia, for example, require human intervention in culling kangaroo populations (and maintain balance in the circle of life).
This is one of those tactics in pushing an agenda. If you see any positive effects of an "aggressor" suppress it or ignore it altogether. In this propaganda piece, BBC is trying so hard to push that humans are simply aggressors to nature and have done absolutely nothing good in working with nature. This is simply not true - not true at all.
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