#specism

...but that's a good quality, in a human being.

Image with kind permission from Bri VT.

What if Anon.

This is very important reading. As I grow older, I find I have doubts about so many things, but of this, I’m surer than ever: nothing will fundamentally change or get better about our world as long as humans treat other species as if they’re disposable objects that exist for our pleasure, use, and profit. The step between a man who exploits an animal and the man who exploits another man is much, much shorter than we think.

(And also: unpopular opinion, but ‘exploit’ can mean a lot of things. Farm animals are exploited, but so are dogs bred into absurdity, guinea pigs living alone and cats forced to wear fancy costumes.)

Tex: Each of your questions is a slightly different, albeit related, topic, so I’ll break my answer down accordingly.

If other species of the homo genus still existed, how would everyone cohabitate in society?

There’s an example I see frequently for ostensibly unlike groups sharing the same space, and that is tigers versus lions. As the wiki explains, the vast majority of these cases where tigers and lions not only meet but do so with hostile behaviour is a man-made alteration of the environment, quite often to make money. This isn’t the natural pattern of behaviour of either tigers or lions, and in fact they usually share territory by splitting it up nocturnally vs diurnally.

Tigers, to follow the analogy, have been noted to share the same territory as other predators with few extenuating circumstances (Lonely Planet), so it’s not entirely impossible for this to be adapted to multiple species within homo genus, since it would just mean navigating some social politics on who gets what territory and when.

I think that a lot of it would depend on how they live around each other as an inter-species society. I’m keeping to predators because humans are a predator species, but in order to expand on different civilization types, we’ll need to incorporate the variable of tools and crafting.

Because of that, it would be useful to note octopi. As of 2018, they have been observed to congregating in city-like groups, with all of the typical features of communicating with each other and territorial disputes (Science Alert). This means that communal living - and thus eventually stratification within a group - isn’t strictly the domain of modern humans, nor even to a single species (Encyclopedia Britannica). Ergo, I think it’s quite possible to have multiple species of a similar niche living together in the same square of land with little issue.

Also would specism exist like racism?

Personally, that’s a toss-up. If we had sufficiently distinguishable species that match modern humans in terms of communication, crafting, and family relationships? Then yes, absolutely, because modern humans are very well-researched in terms of forming affectionate relationships with everything from other animals, plants, and even inanimate objects due to sheer neurophysiology for social behaviour.

If no, then… likely we would still do the pack-bonding thing, on the basis of things like cuteness, usefulness, or some combination of the above. Otherwise, I would have to lean on the history of racism to make an opinion, because a lot of it currently in the world is resource-based and/or ideological (said ideologies seem to be far newer than the human race, so its argument is weighted against that fact).

Could different species reproduce?

Well, I’m sure someone’s going to try. That depends quite a lot on both your definition of reproduce as well as how different the species are. Do we count each successfully-born offspring that doesn’t have the ability to reproduce, or do we not? What would be the basis for a different species - a different nose, living in different environments, or something more extreme like breathing air versus breathing water?

Ability to reproduce doesn’t necessarily have bearing on whether or not different species can get along, particularly if they’re so closely related as now-extinct homo genus species would be. There’s quite a lot of factors involved in sorting whether and to what degree they would interact in a peaceful/productive manner, so I don’t have any firm answers for you.