That is valid. I considered species would likely go extinct before a notable mutation would show up. The only exception might be if a species were already heading in a certain direction genetically for the last ‘X’ million years maybe it would accelerate. I’ve seen or heard several different things that made me start toying with the idea… orangutans using a spear to fish, deer behaving differently in more highly hunted areas over several generations, orcas learning to bait birds with regurgitated fish. There is still a huge gap before reasoning though.

It is the loss of any specific ecosystem that concerns me the most. This is one of if not the leading cause of extinction. Extinction of any species, flora or fauna, is truly a loss.

I have a hypothesis that the massive pressure exerted by humans as an intelligent species on the rest of the animal kingdom will nurture a massive evolutionary jump somewhere. Could be wrong but I kind of think it would be a good thing if there were something to put our species in check.

Edit:

A lot of people seem to disagree. I’d love to see why you think this isn’t feasible in the comments.

To quantify my previous statement, I would consider minor changes in brain physiology /function to be ‘massive’. I don’t think this would knock humans off the top of the hierarchy by any means but changes like this I think would have the potential to shift how we interact with the world.

I mean if anything that existed in relatively large numbers (ants for example) developed even a small amount of intelligence, 100 times dumber than the dumbest human, their threat level to any other species would increase exponentially.

Insects probably unlikely, I think it would most likely be primates first or one of a few other mammals.

And I guess if you don’t believe in evolution, that would kind of make further discussion pointless since my assertion relies on it.