Can non-human creatures exterminate other species?

In all of creation, only humans can be so destructive.

Envision a sky so dense with birds that they obscure the sun. The migration of passenger pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius) used to take hours since flocks contained billions of birds. We then began firing at them.

According to Audubon, commercial hunting of passenger pigeons began in the 19th century and ended in 1914. These birds are a shining example of how easily and quickly, even widespread species can be eradicated by human activity. Is it simply humans who can wipe out entire species, or can other animals do the same?

Almost, but human beings are usually involved. If people introduce these animals to the incorrect ecosystem, they can wipe out entire species and become invasive. Invasive species are those that thrive in a non-native habitat and cause ecological or economic damage. In the Florida Everglades, invasive Asian Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) are eating everything in sight. According to the Florida Museum of Natural History, the python population originally consisted of escaped or released pets.

Those species are said to suffer from ecological naveté if they are unable to detect or respond effectively to the presence of a novel species in their environment. Animals don't spontaneously develop the ability to run away from or fight off aliens, so they shouldn't be held responsible.

Professor of invasion biology at University College London in the United Kingdom Tim Blackburn told Live Science that "the primary way that alien species wipe out natives is through consumption" (i.e., predators introduced to areas where there have been no predators before, or the types of predators that were there were different). Because of this, "they have a built-in advantage" and can easily consume native flora and fauna.

Blackburn frequently uses house cats as an illustration of an invading species. According to him, "they have led to the extinction of hundreds of species of bird," including the Stephens Island wren (Traversia lyalli) in New Zealand, which was discovered to be extinct in 1895. According to the American Bird Conservancy, cats are the primary direct human cause of bird mortality in North America . Therefore, domestic cats pose a larger danger to birds in the United States than firearms.

It is humans who are to blame for the global distribution of predatory cats and massive snakes. After that, we will be responsible for whatever they do. But what about the cases in which animals move to a new region of their own accord? Blackburn argues that species have a natural tendency to disperse to neighbouring places where the species are comparable and can thus respond correctly to one another, ensuring that there are no unbalanced pairings.

The shifting of land can occasionally cause a reorganization among different species. A notable example is the Great American Biotic Interchange, which occurred between 10 million and 10 thousand years ago when tectonic plates pulled North America and South America together, creating a land bridge through which species from both continents could meet. Many new animals, including predators like bears and big cats, were brought to South America, while North America gained species like ground sloths and armadillo relatives called glyptodonts.

Animals of a greater variety migrated from North America to South America than the other way around. Hence South America gained more inhabitants. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020, this was caused by the abnormally high rate of mammal extinction in South America. As a result of the trade, fewer South American species were able to populate North America, while more became extinct successfully.

Juan Carrillo, a paleobiologist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and lead author of the 2020 research, speculated that "maybe the South American native mammals were more sensitive to the new predators." One possible explanation for the unequal exchange is predation by North American predators.

"The ground sloths and the glyptodonts were presumably huge enough to avoid these predators," Carrillo told Live Science. That could contribute to their successful northern migration, as their fossils have been located in numerous North American locations.

Despite the undeniable link between current invasive species and extinction rates, a more nuanced picture emerges from the dialogue between these two sides. "It was not just one instant in the history of Earth, but actually took across several million years and had numerous phases," Carrillo added. Earth's cooling during this time of mass extinction in South America certainly also played a role.

Should we still presume that the arrival of a North American predator led to the extinction of at least some South American prey species? It's plausible, but Carrillo warns that it'll be tough to pin down the exact cause because of climate change and other confounding variables.

Animal features are developed in an evolutionary struggle, but it doesn't mean predators rise to dominate their prey. Carrillo pointed out that if a predator were to wipe out its prey, it would eventually starve to death without any food source. In principle, a predator with multiple prey may survive the extinction of a single species, but in practice, there are frequently many causes of death.

As far as Blackburn is aware, there have been no biological invasions in which one species completely wiped out another. It takes a lot of effort to tease out the processes normally going on because "the natural world is just naturally tremendously intricate," he added.

Overhunting, damaging habitat, and introducing invasive species are all apparent ways in which humans are directly contributing to the extinction of other species. Those "dramatic impacts" are "almost strong proof" that "these processes are real and significantly different to what has gone on before," as Blackburn put it.

Reference : https://www.livescience.com/can-animals-make-other-species-extinct

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