There is an important and intuitively obvious sense in which humanity is collectively much more powerful than any other group of animals. This sense is surprisingly difficult to make explicit.
Certainly there are some species of animal, like chickens, whose entire existence is dictated almost entirely by human whims. But are humans more powerful than rats?
Humans would like it if there were fewer rats in our cities. And we have even eliminated rats from some places: The Canadian province of Alberta has a 70-year rat control program that has been wildly successful. It is believed that there are no breeding populations of rats anywhere in the entire province. More than half a million square kilometers, rat-free.
Even so: large as it is, Alberta represents less than half a percent of the landmass of Earth. Why haven’t humans eliminated rats from other inhabited regions, assuming
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There is an important and intuitively obvious sense in which humanity is collectively much more powerful than any other group of animals. This sense is surprisingly difficult to make explicit.
Certainly there are some species of animal, like chickens, whose entire existence is dictated almost entirely by human whims. But are humans more powerful than rats?
Humans would like it if there were fewer rats in our cities. And we have even eliminated rats from some places: The Canadian province of Alberta has a 70-year rat control program that has been wildly successful. It is believed that there are no breeding populations of rats anywhere in the entire province. More than half a million square kilometers, rat-free.
Even so: large as it is, Alberta represents less than half a percent of the landmass of Earth. Why haven’t humans eliminated rats from other inhabited regions, assuming we’d like to?
The answer is, basically, that even though we have god-like power from the perspective of rats, our resources are limited, and we address problems based on their urgency and cost.
I don’t think many reasonable people would claim that the apex animals on our planet are rodents (in fact this is a humorous worldbuilding element in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). If humanity collectively decides it wants to demolish a building, drop a nuclear weapon, or test a new drug, the rats, whose lives will be created, destroyed, uplifted, or immiserated, aren’t consulted or even much considered.
And as we go about changing the world to suit our preferences, the rats will remain unconsulted. It seems clear to me that rats will only get what they want when what they want happens to be nearly-costless to humans.
