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Oversized Rats Could Take Over Earth After Next Mass Extinction
In the event
of a future mass extinction, rats may be the animals best suited to repopulate the world, some scientists say.
And if rats did “take over” after such a wipeout, they’d likely balloon in size, scientists also say.
Mass extinctions have hit the Earth at least five times in geologic history, most recently about 65 million years ago, when scientists think an asteroid hit the planet and wiped out the dinosaurs. Mammals took advantage of the newly available ecological space and ultimately repopulated and dominated the animal kingdom.
Some researchers think the Earth is on the brink of its next mass extinction that could hit within the next several centuries, as a result of human-induced habitat destruction and environmental degradation, said Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom who studies Earth history. Just in the past several hundred years, thousands of animal species have become endangered, and hundreds have gone extinct, many as a result of human activity. [Wipe Out: History's 7 Most Mysterious Extinctions]
Zalasiewicz and colleagues have developed a thought experiment in which they consider which animal might be the most likely to survive and repopulate the world if this purported mass extinction were to take place — and they concluded that rats may be the best candidates.
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2014/02/oversized-rats-could-take-over-earth-after-next-mass-extinction/
