this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Yes, most of those we created through breeding, but you could argue that wolves and coyotes created modern deer the same way.
I do wonder if many would go extinct in the medium term from predation, before they can evolve fast enough to adapt; I'm thinking farm pigs and chickens would be OK in the short term - they don't need us to survive - but wild dogs/coyotes/wolves, large cats like the NA lions, raptors, foxes... they'd all be putting a lot of pressure on those mostly defenseless breeds. Pigs are not wild hogs. Cattle and horses exist just fine in their environments without humans. Even with predation, herds are large and they aren't defenseless.
Sheep are an exception; like you said, they need us to perform maintenance because of how we've bred them. Are there others?
My thoughts go to a lot of our stored and operational fuel supplies. Nuclear fuel (both civil and weapon) would eventually become exposed through lack of storage container maintinance and cooling starting meltdown reactions in their localized environments. Oil extraction, distribution, and refining systems are automated to an extent but somewhere a tank is going ng to rupture or just run out of space and then it's all getting into the environment, likely at sea to have what effects that may cause.
Oh, yeah. If we suddenly disappeared, there'd be so many environmental catastrophes.
I'm sure it'd level off, but a driver falling asleep at the wheel on the highway tends to cause problems. If the BP spill in the Gulf had nobody trying to cap it off who knows how long it'd have kept going.