Life on Earth is now going to evolve around humans

Evolution is about adapting to ones environment. On Earth, there are currently 8 billion humans actively altering planetary climate conditions. They are causing the deaths of thousands of species every year, and are selectively choosing which species (pets) would prosper above all others. Today, humanity is as much of a force of nature as a hurricane or an Earthquake in terms of the impact left upon the land. It i due to this influence upon the surrounding environment that all life on Earth will evolve to learn to adapt to humans to survive.

Evolutionary traits in life around us that are influenced by humans:

1. Intelligence - It is believed that city rats and raccoons might be becoming smarter than their more rural counterparts due to requiring higher cognitive function to navigate life in the big city. Among animals capable of learned behavior (monkeys, dolphins, chimps, etc), this intelligence increase may take he form of learning from observing human actions such as cleaning ones food or chucking rocks or sharpening a stick.

2. Avoidance behaviors - Some animals may learn avoidance behaviors to hide from humans as humans are one of the more unpredictable creatures out there. One may feed you and the next may kill you. If you hurt one somebody from your group gets killed. Or you get hunted simply for being delicious or exotic. Due to these factors some animals may evolve to outright avoid humans and human territories.

3. Increased resilience - This is most often found in species humans are trying to actively exterminate. Especially bacteria. Already there is great concern around bacteria developing antibiotic resistance over time and becoming lethal to humans once again. While we are unlikely to see the evolution of bullet proof grizzly bears, we are over time likely to see more and more animals actively adapted to better survive human encounters.

4. Faster mutation rates - As the global environment is altered in ever faster rates by human activity, the animal species most likely to survive might be the ones with higher mutation rates, allowing them to adapt over generations to human altered environments faster and faster.

5. Shorter lifespans - Animals may evolve to have shorter lifespans as it would give them more opportunities to adapt generation after generation, allowing them to keep up with human dominated environmental changes.

6. Plastic resistance - Most commonly found in microorganisms, there are bacteria species that are learning to adapt to plastics in their environment. Remember, there was a point in Earth's history when wood could not be consumed by microorganisms.

7. Human friendly - Some species are learning to evolve to be more human friendly as it increases their chances of survival and being fed by humans. Due to this we are likely to see an ever increasing number of domesticated species over time.

Impact of humans on animal evolution over time:

Short term impact:

Mass die off of hundreds of thousands of species. Population boom of domestic, semi domestic, and urban species. Invasive species explosion.

Medium term impact:

Emergence of new ecosystem balance with lower variety and higher quantities of surviving species. Bull frogs in Australia. Lizards in Florida. Invasive species beginning to assimilate in new environments as rest of life adapts to them. Boom in the number of semi domestic species.

Long term impact:

Garden of Eden scenario. All surviving species know to be nice to humans in some way. Animal species evolving to be actively beautiful to humans (alive not dead). Predatory animals know to avoid humans or to not hunt humans and be nice to them for extra food. Animal species learning to communicate with humans.

Danger scenario for humans regarding evolution on Earth:

Scenario 1:

Microorganisms become resistant to all human medicine and we see the return of mass die offs in humanity from disease.

Scenario 2:

Humans evolve into a dead end. Humans evolve over the long term to get ever dumber over time ( idiocracy scenario ) or humans evolve to become ever weaker over time ( brains in vats scenario ), or humans lose all reproductive interest ( population collapse scenario ), or human capacity for devastating violence surpasses their capacity to fear the use of such weapons scenario ( self destruction ).

Scenario 3:

The most unlikely of all possible scenarios. Evolution catches up to humans. That is, animals evolve to be able to mass kill humans with ease. This would mean predators that figure out how to hunt humans on the daily without issue while being impossible to track down or stop by humans. Currently, the tiger comes the closest, killing 50-60 humans every year. In our scenario we are presuming the evolution of a bear or tiger or lion that learns to perfectly adapt to urban conditions and hunt for people and hide among buildings without getting caught, or even when found being impossible to bag or kill because it is too good at escaping.

Conclusion:

Life on Earth is going to evolve around humans due to how much of an impact they have on the planet. The most likely evolutionary scenarios for life on Earth is that they would adapt to having humans on top by learning to hide from humans, get along with humans, and adapting to human made environments such as towns and cities. The less likely scenarios for how life evolves on Earth is going to be predators evolving to hunt humans and being good enough at it to thrive on hunting humans. Overall the evolution of the human may be considered on par with the evolution of trees, to the point that one day life on Earth won't be able to survive without humans helping it along just like trees help us with Oxygen.

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