Our dogs' diversity can be traced back to the Stone Age

The most successful land-based hunters are variants of dogs and cats [1]. (House cats remain in the top ten.)

Humans broke the game by allying with or exterminating other apex predators. I don’t believe another double-apex alliance is seen anywhere else, in our biosphere or in the fossil record.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting_success

No, we broke the game by domestication, where we simplified hunting to walking the animal into the slaughterhouse. Mammalian wildlife is < 5% of mammalian biomass on earth, with humans being around 30% and domesticated animals being around 60% [1].

For example, there are around 30 billion chickens in the world, butchered within 6-8 weeks. Repeat.

Domestication was partly the result of not eliminating apex predators. A shepherd would guard a flock of sheep, and farmers would historically live/sleep near/with the animals, to protect them day and night.

[1] https://wildlife.org/on-a-global-scale-livestock-outweighs-w...

I think this is quite obviously a Yes And situation.

We've broken the game so many damn times, humans are awesome and we need to keep being awesome.

Somebodies gotta prevent an asteroid from killing the earth over these next 100 years.

It ain't gonna be the dolphins.

Speaking of which, we really need to ask the dolphins if they'd like some thumbs.

Interestingly, although giant asteroids have certainly been responsible for some of the mass extinctions we see in the fossil record, apparently super volcanoes are also right up there. And I don't think there is a damn thing we can do about them

> apparently super volcanoes are also right up there. And I don't think there is a damn thing we can do about them

I'm not sure about that.

Don't get me wrong, an example of a super-volcano is Yellowstone National Park, so I agree we can't prevent them

Rather, looking at the pandemic response and various wars, I think (most) world governments are competent enough to re-organise labour and national diets to mitigate the problems one would cause: covering farms in poly-tunnels, having "national service" that's about building/repurposing farming infrastructure rather than military function, food rationing, changes to farming laws to make sure livestock is only on land that doesn't support intensive crops, etc.

> an example of a super-volcano is Yellowstone National Park, so I agree we can't prevent them

We absolutely can, and extract geothermal energy from the system to boot.