[Biologist123]

Well done in getting this up immediately. Pieces like this BBC piece are either implicit or explicit propaganda to define “nature” as a world without humans. Even the word “freakosystem”, as novel as it is, sets up an implicit good/bad dichotomy.

Edit: If you on-board the assumption that all change is bad, you potentially open yourself up to a great deal of anxiety associated with that change.

[dodslaser]

While this is technically correct, there is an important distinction to be made that we are the only species capable of even understanding the ramifications of our actions on an ecosystem, and choosing to change our behavior to have less (or more) of an impact on the environment we are in.

Any species could drive another species to extinction, or carry them from one location to another, but no other species are actively choosing to do so.

[Ygg2]

What does "actively choosing" mean? An ant might choose to move the bugs they milk. Do they count?

[haswell]

I’d define this as: we consciously understand the potential and real consequences of our actions.

Ants operate on instinct and are not capable of extrapolating higher order consequences like we are.

[devilbunny]

Thinking of individual ants is really the wrong analogy; ant colonies are more like the organism. Your hands work on instinct too (just look at newborn babies; they can do very little, but they can grab things).

[haswell]

I don't think my response changes for a colony.

I'm not saying ants/ant colonies don't exhibit intelligent/sophisticated behavior, but we don't have evidence to suggest they understand the higher order consequences associated with where they build their colonies.

For similar reasons, we don't consider it murder when an apex predator kills a human, but we do when it's another human.

> Your hands work on instinct too

The operation of many (if not most) of the systems in our bodies is instinctual and a mystery to us from a 1st person perspective, e.g. we don't actively beat our hearts, digest our food, etc. But continuing the last point, if you used your hands to cause harm to another human, "my hands work on instinct" isn't a reasonable defense. We still have agency and the ability to choose how we use our hands, and we're (generally) aware of the consequences of the actions we facilitate with our hands, even if we aren't directly aware of how our hands function.

[Biologist123]

Thanks, “actively choosing” assumes we have conscious will. Whilst widespread, this belief is alas just an assumption.

[Ygg2]

It goes beyond that. Depending on ecosystem and size of settlements human leaving may actually decrease bio diversity. Think it was Bulgaria or Romania, but with rural places that had their populations die out, also saw decrease in bio diversity.