How Will Animals Look 250 Million Years From Now?

angkor writes "'How will Earth look 5 million, 100 million, even 200 million years from now?' Fantasic and fun speculation from Animal Planet. It's the work of Dougal Adams, who started this idea years ago in the out-of-print After Man: A Zoology of the Future."

Comments

Interesting!

[doughmein_dot_net]

Very cool. I have Dougal Adams' orignal book ("After Man") and I thought it was very well done. I was able to find it at a local thrift shop, and it was well worth its purchase price. I recommend interested readers to find a copy of this book if they can.

I do think he got carried away with the carnivorous monkeys and all that, but it was still an interesting exploration.

Re:Interesting!

[juhaz]

I haven't seen the program, but website linked states that they don't even expect it to be accurate due to chaotical nature of subject at hand and long timeframe. Merely saying that animals like those could _possibly_ evolve based on the scientific data is not claiming to know the future and say that they WILL.

Just one very small glimpse into one of countless potential futures. Nothing bad in that as long as it's acknowledged instead of 'em trying to claim that this and only this is exactly how it will be.

Re:Interesting!

[donnacha]

I was able to find it at a local thrift shop

It is quite hard to get hold of but I run a very small online book business in the UK, PristineBooks.com, and have 20 new copies selling for $27 or £17 or 27 Euros payable via PayPal and including free shipping to anywhere in the world. Next day delivery in the UK, three days to mainland Europe and around one week to the US, Asia and Australia.

Apologies for the shameless plug but I guessed that the out-of-print status of this book might cause a lot of frustration to anyone who finds this discussion interesting.

Anyone who's interesting can contact me via the PristineBooks.com site, cheers.

Frankly, I didn't like it

[Lobsang]

First of all, let me state I'm no scientist. But some stuff just doesn't seem reasonable:

• FLISH (for FLying fISH) - Does it make much sense that an animal that cannot generate its own heat would spend an enourmous amount of calories flying? Also, is there a fish that can fly like a bird these days or any indication in that sense? The contrary is pretty common (penguins, et al).
  
  
• Giant Squid roaming the forests - Owhhh, C'mon! What possible advantage is there in it? They can get all the food they need, without the hassle of vertebrae, in the ocean.
  
  
• Sharks with flashing colors - This one was just too bad! Why would a shark need flashing things on the side of their bodies? According to the program, to "guide the other sharks and hunt in packs". C'mon... We all know light gets filtered rather rapidly by water. Wouldn't sound be a better choice?
  
  
• Chrome Spiders herding the last mammal on earth - Yes, you heard it right. BTW, what's the point in a animal being silver chrome in color? To shine the sunlight and attract the predators?
  

I also disliked the concept that most animals will get bigger. That seems contrary to what we've observed in the last million years. Animals like Sharks and Alligators have survived millenia without many changes. What makes one think the radical changes proposed in the program would occur?

Funny thing is that I had my nephew (11 years old) watching the program with me. He laughed most of the time and thought the ideas were mostly ludicrous. And see, he's 11...

Re:Frankly, I didn't like it

[forgotmypassword]

1. yes, there are. there are fish with extended fins that can glide. and squid can propel themseleves as well.
   
2. they are very intelligent and can travel on land if needed. They also have very advanced eyes
   
3. other sea life does it. some jellyfish and squid. for squid, the changing colors hypnotizes prey.
   
4. ???
   

Re:Frankly, I didn't like it

[dasunt]

You might not understand evolution.

First of all, 200 years is a long time. Look at your ancesters 200 years ago, they weren't winning any prizes.

Second, once a species becomes successful, it faces competition from itself. One solution to this self-induced competition is to radiate into new niches. Another problem is that climates do change as well, and all of a sudden, the successful forest creature doesn't have a lot of forests to live in. This is why, in relatively recent years (according to how geologists see the world), several purely carnivorous species turned into several species, including grass eaters. Take yourself. You are decended from tree-dwelling primates, which were decended from insect eaters. Just because your ancesters were damn efficient at eating flies all day doesn't mean you do.

Oh, btw, Dougal Douglas has a book out by the same theme, released 10 or so years ago. Title was "After Man, a Biology of the Future". The book is a little grim though in predicting that the amount of damage humans have done to certain species is irreplaceable, which leads to such things as rats becoming wolflike preditors and rabbits becoming antelopelike creatures.

The author was Dougal Dixon, not Dougal Adams

[doughmein_dot_net]

Oops. My mistake.

Re:I saw it and wasn't impressed...

[forgotmypassword]

the exoskeleton is a problem

but most important is their open circulatory system is not capable of delivering oxygen and removing toxins from a large body

OTOH squids have some amazingly diverse evolved traits, little would surprise me

Re:Didnt see it but

[jericho4.0]

I agree with your take on viruses, but also think that us humans special place leads to a greater impact. Namely our medical treatments, lifespans, ease of travel, high density populations, monosourced food, etc.

BTW, the OED only gives 'viruses' for the plural of 'virus'. this article has far too much information on the subject. :-)

Going totally off topic, it was funny finding that link on perl.com, knowing Larry Wall's liguistic background. I'll save my opinion on perl for another forum.

"After Man" was by Dougal Dixon

[alanw]

The original work was "After Man", "a zoology of the future", by Dougal Dixon, with an introduction by Desmond Morris.

First published in Great Britain by Granada Publishing, 1981.

ISBN 0 586 05750 1

Re:Not Tasty my friend

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Compare an American chicken to an Italian (or, more generally, western European) chicken and say that again. European chickens are generally scrawny, tough, gamey birds. American chickens are fatter, and more succulent. This is partly because of different farming methods, but also due to the genetics of the different populations.

There are other benefits to selective farm breeding. Farm-raised pigs have sweeter, more pleasant flesh than wild pigs, and are virtually free of Trichinella nematodes. Farm-raised veal results in a meat that is simply unavailable in free-range animals. And, of course, farm-raised seafood is almost universally superior to wild seafood.

Don't they watch today's nature documentaries?

[geekotourist]

Because if they'd seen a few more before producing this show they could have made it much better. I was fast forwarding far too many times- it was slow. Now that Tivo believes I am Charles Darwin I have a near infinite supply of "death in the desert- a viper's story" type shows (which I *do* watch, so it's not a bad thing). What a typical nature show has, which the Future is Wild didn't, include:

• A focus. While they couldn't give us a mother and cubs, they could've given us the evolutionary equivalent. Take a couple of classes or orders and get us to care what happens to them over then next 200 million years. Introduce the squids early on. The only continuity TFIW had was "location of former cities"
• Drama- rather than suddenly show the last mammal, they should've shown 100 million years of decreasing diversity.
• Digressions. TFIW had few animals per time zone. If TFIW didn't have the computational budget to animate more they at least could have had more still shots. Documentaries tend to be filled with side loops, constantly showing local diversity- while the predator waits, we take five minutes to check out a cute symbiotic relationship, or a flock of colorful birds, or the prey's prey, or a dung beetle (which also is part of my next point...)
• Humor. Let's see some baby spiders falling off the web before going into the extinction of mammals next time.

A few random points relating to other threads in the comments:

• Flying fish- yes, they do exist, flapping their tiny pectoral fins: check out some of the Amazonian Hatchetfish species.
• The unlikeliness of X (giant land squid, silver spiders, etc): who'd have predicted what Pikaia-like creatures could lead to over the next 500 million years
• the diversity of life over the past 500 million years: spend a few hours exploring the Tree of Life Project: after that, none of TFIW speculations seem too weird (although they made some physiological mistakes- as pointed out by others, the giant tortoises's legs don't make sense)
• Extinct mammals: well, out of all of these all we have left are the birds.
• Missing signs of humans: I've seen estimates (can't find them right away- one was in Sci-Am I think) that suggest most large-scale signs of humans (buildings, satellites, canals) would be gone within 500,000 years. Even the longest-lasting signs (large concentrations of radioactive elements, space probes, AOL CDs) won't last more than 100-200 million years given subduction, etc).