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Overnight, all higher life, multicellular life forms from trees and grass to dogs and elephants reached a level of intelligence similar to that of humans. For example, they can communicate effectively, using their own languages. How would events unfold on Earth? (just for the first few days, although longer timespans are welcome but optional)

Specifically, if animals were suddenly sentient and able to communicate, how might this effect an overthrow of the humans' socio-economic hegemony?

I'll add some clarifying details:

  • Different groups of animals have developed to communicate in their own language families (dogs might have related languages and local dialects; cats would have their own languages and dialects).
  • Also, they have been granted the level where they have translators & interpreters so that different groups of animals and plant life can communicate with each other.
  • Animal interpreters can also communicate with humans.

(Although I'm excluding microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi for the purposes of this question, if possible, it'd be nice if answers also included what happened if they weren't excluded as well.)

elemtilas
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Adi219
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    Hi Adi, while this is a fascinating question it’s currently much too broad for the site. We call these kinds of questions “high concept” questions because it’d easily be possible to write an entire book on the topic without even scratching the surface. I’ve voted to put your question on hold so you can [edit] it without getting swamped by weak answers. – Dubukay Aug 26 '18 at 16:01
  • @Dubukay Ohhh right then. I'll edit it now to be more specific (hopefully specific enough :) ) – Adi219 Aug 26 '18 at 16:02
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    Is there something more specific we can help you answer? For instance, how the economy might be affected if trees had the same rights as humans? Or what a society of sentient fungi might look like? You might also enjoy using the Sandbox to get some feedback on what kinds of things will narrow it down. – Dubukay Aug 26 '18 at 16:03
  • @Dubukay Edited it :) Also, thanks for the polite heads-up as I'm not very acquainted with the Worldbuilding culture, but I know SO isn't as friendly when questions aren't 'correct', so thanks :) – Adi219 Aug 26 '18 at 16:05
  • @Dubukay Is it specific enough now? – Adi219 Aug 26 '18 at 16:05
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    This conversation might be easier to have in [chat] - meet me there? – Dubukay Aug 26 '18 at 16:11
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    In the long term, everyone either starves or becomes a cannibal. In the short term, we don't even like to give humans rights, there's simply no chance of giving plants any – nzaman Aug 26 '18 at 16:35
  • You might want to check out Intelligent Animals Integrating into (Western) Human Society. – user Aug 26 '18 at 16:42
  • For what it's worth, I think the accepted answer to that question applies here also, at least to an extent: What you won't get is an Animals of Farthing Wood world. – user Aug 26 '18 at 16:43
  • Well i spent like 5 minutes trying to answer your question, but now your question is blocked as being to broad, now I cannot post it and I'm unsure how to just message you an answer, so crap dude! Sorry! – WolvesEyes Aug 26 '18 at 17:43
  • @WolvesEyes No worries mate! Thanks for the effort though :) I'm on my phone rn so I can't go on chat, but maybe you could comment your answer? ;) – Adi219 Aug 26 '18 at 18:03
  • @Adi219 Honestly that was the plan lol, I was going to send it to you in chat, but then I lost the copy of it and couldn't paste or copy the text again because it was gone, if I have time to rewrite it tonight or tomorrow morning I will, and I'll send it over to you,! – WolvesEyes Aug 26 '18 at 18:22
  • @nzaman That's the medium term. In the long term, after the vast majority of humanity and other animals have starved to death and society has collapsed, some small groups will work out how to farm yeast/bacteria colonies/whatever to survive, and not all of those groups will be murdered by rampaging cannibals, so the world can rebuild. And the plants will have a different experience—on the one hand, they're much more limited in defense against the gangs of sociopaths; on the other, most of them don't need to murder to survive—so they'll be an interesting part of the rebuilding process. – abarnert Aug 26 '18 at 21:37
  • @abarnert: but what will they eat while learning to farm yeast? There's only so much algae and mushrooms to go around. Fruit is an option, until trees start complaining about molestation, but sociopaths have the only winning strategy – nzaman Aug 27 '18 at 12:02
  • @nzaman Remember, the vast majority of them will starve or be killed by marauders. But once one of the small colonies of survivors that had a defensible bio lab and enough canned food or algae or whatever makes it, they can rebuild the world. There’s plenty of post apocalyptic fiction about such groups, and the usual problem of an overzealous military commander or ambitious wannabe leader who gets them all eaten by zombies or blown up in a time travel experiment gone wrong shouldn’t come up. Plus, none of those movies have a talking dog to help the scientists. – abarnert Aug 27 '18 at 16:50
  • @abarnert: But it isn't only humans involved here. Every animal in the kingdom is suddenly targeting the same small environmental niche. If 7 billion humans are bad, add in a few magnitudes more of insects alone – nzaman Aug 27 '18 at 17:47
  • @nzaman Even more of those animals are going to die than humans. Most animals aren’t that widespread in the first place, and cows, or even wolves, even with intelligence, will be no match for humans who already know, e.g., how to use guns and where to get them. A few of them—especially heavily social animals like bees or those that are already human-friendly like dogs and cats—will survive with the good-guy research colonies and be around to help rebuild the world. But I can’t imagine bees with no background in science solving the problem on their own. Lots and lots of species go extinct. – abarnert Aug 27 '18 at 19:02

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Nothing much would happen for the first few days. Intelligence by itself isn’t very useful. You also need the experience and culture to leverage your intelligence and make it do something useful. Your newly intelligent creatures can’t communicate with each other (more then they already did) — no language. They can’t make sense of the world around them, because they don’t have the mental constructs to do so. The short-lived ones will never get any benefit — an ant that lives for a month doesn’t have enough time, any more than a month-old baby does. The longer-lived ones will eventually develop cultures and language, but it will take centuries at best.

Mike Scott
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  • Sorry, I forgot to add that they can communicate with each other as they've developed forms of communication. Thanks, though! – Adi219 Aug 26 '18 at 16:14
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    @Adi219 How have they “developed forms of communication”? Language isn’t something you can just drop in to a brain as a plug-in; it depends on context and experience. The word for ”table” means nothing without a concept of what a table is; where does that concept come from in a newly-intelligent ant? – Mike Scott Aug 26 '18 at 16:19
  • I'm so sorry! I've edited it (again) to reflect what I'm asking. Essentially, the animals have learnt how to communicate over a few months (they're clever, go with it). – Adi219 Aug 26 '18 at 16:21
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    @Adi219 This is Worldbuilding; we can’t just “go with it”. You’re building a logically incoherent world. A newly intelligent animal has as much understanding of the world as a new-born baby, and you need to work with that. – Mike Scott Aug 26 '18 at 16:23
  • It's a magical world, and magic is being used to turn the animals sentient in the first place, so I'd have thought that some parts are allowed to be logically incoherent. – Adi219 Aug 26 '18 at 16:24
  • For the sake of answering the question, let's say that magic was used (by an unknown third party i.e. not humans) so that the animals can efficiently communicate. – Adi219 Aug 26 '18 at 16:25
  • @Adi219 There are two ways I see it going in the medium to long term. Either the animals get proper rights and ALL humans go on to become vegetarians, or we keep on butchering them. The biggest issue with the first option is that all these animals are going to have to live along in human society, while having to live independently. Maybe we can't own pets anymore, so all dogs now have to live by themselves. Find their own food and their own shelter without the help of humans. In short, the intelligence to communicate would be like a curse on them forcing them to live as a part of human society – Shadowzee Aug 27 '18 at 04:56
  • @Shadowzee - long before rights, or pets, or animals living in society, or apart from it, etc become an issue is the question of food - not just human-people becoming vegetarians or not, but also what the animals will eat. Like each other. And how's that gonna influence the ideas of what it means to be a person and how one should treat other sapeints (or, well, how they can afford to). Obligate carnivory is gonna be fun. Not to mention plantlife is included, as per OP. There won't be any kinda common society, there will be either species-ist wars or else just chaos. – Megha Aug 29 '18 at 08:18