We tend to define dominance in terms of tool use, language and culture, and the ability to modify our environment. This is a very anthropocentric view that prizes the things we happen to be good at and ignores those we aren’t.
Bacteria outnumber and outmass us, have colonised more of the planet and will likely be here long after we have gone. For 99.9 per cent of the history of life on Earth, the planet has managed perfectly well without human-style intelligence and if we disappeared, there is no particular reason to suppose that anything would necessarily step up to take our place.
Octopuses and dolphins are both already very intelligent, but living in the water rules out fire and electricity, so refining metals and building machines would be impossible for them. Evolving to live on land would be a 100-million-year endeavour.
Meanwhile, on land, existing primates would have a much easier time moving into the environments we had vacated. Baboons, which already live in close proximity with humans in South Africa, are social and have similar intelligence to chimpanzees.
In the immediate aftermath of human extinction, they would be able to take over human settlements and scavenge the food and livestock we left behind. This would probably result in a sudden population increase.
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