Honestly, how do you think the world would change over the coming years if we all woke up tomorrow and every animal were as smart as human beings?

War! Straight up crazy WAR like you couldn't imagine! For a long long long time. Though really this depends on the type of intelligence you are talking about. Are they raised to be civil like we were?

Or, are we talking just today's normal wild animals with all the sudden human level intelligence overnight? That would be catastrophic. They wouldn't know how to handle it. And we would no longer be able to handle them. Eventually they could learn to be civil like we did. But that would be a long time. So for a long time shit would be nuts. Just like it was with us up until the last couple centuries.

Add to that, the fact that the Earth is already full of one dominating species that is slowly growing too large and killing it. If they were all were like that. Say goodby to the trees and pretty much any comfort you once had.. There wouldn't be enough resources for that many intelligent species. Everything living thing outside starts trying to build a human level society. Mother nature would probably have to wipe us all out eventually. Yeah that wouldn't be good.

Science has already speculated that if aliens came here it would be bad for us. Two intelligent entities that don't know each other usually war. And of course the smarter one wins. Look at our history. So if everything had the same level smarts we have right now. We would more than likely just wipe each other out.

And that's not even looking at what it would be like to deal with animals like snakes or bears that have superior physical weaponry built into them. Imagine a viper or a wolverine or bear that was as smart/conniving as a human but still had the killer instincts of a predator.Or a hive of bees or locusts that could think? Yeah that would be fucked. Amazing but scary as hell.

Some more food for thought. So you said every single species. So even stuff like ant's and slugs Imagine how much they would take over if they were too smart to kill? Also, what about those ubiquitous microscopic things like a virus or bacteria? They would be as smart as us but invisible to us. So all the bacteria in you stomach or on your skin would all the sudden be self aware and have it's own agenda. Such a scary idea. We wouldn't stand a chance against a few monsters like this let alone a whole planet of them. Might make a cool horror flick though. Good luck. Hope that is what you were looking for.

/r/AskReddit Thread