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Originally Posted by UlsterSV
It just strikes me that we could have been the pandas or the tigers but through no great master plan but sheer randomness we aren't. But one day we will most certainly suffer the same struggle they are suffering. At the minute we are the superior beings of this world, but if we don't concentrate all our efforts on continuing our existence, we may well end up being replaced by a superior species.
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The pandas are not much of a threat to us. However, a world without pandas is a sadder one, so you can make a good argument for preservation of diversity purely through selfishness.
Also, if we should ever become second top of the rung instead of top- when the dolphins get fed up of us and unleash their robot army, or whatever- I think it'd possibly be advantageous to be able to say "But look, we didn't wipe out the pandas!" If we have a thousand year legacy of wiping out every species we can't eat, wear, ride or ****, I suspect things might not go too well with the new landlords.
Thing is, even if we annihilate all the non-useful species and convert all of the planet's surface to either bioregeneration or food use, we're still going to run out of space. Just that when we do we'll be in a more thoroughly artificial, and therefore inherently more unstable and fragile, environment. So since it's inevitable that we'll fill up all the available space anyway, why not fill up just a bit less of it? We're not individually going to be enriched by having an extra however many million people stretching the world to capacity, and could be massively disadvantaged.