The Incredible Shrinking Man

The Dwarf Zoo is a growing collection of insularly dwarfed animals. Often when a species gets stuck on an island their size changes. Sometimes they grow larger like the giant turtles on the Galapagos. In Dwarf Zoo however we are interested in insular dwarfs; island animals that have evolved to a strikingly diminuitive size. Perhaps these evolutionary precursors have something to teach us.

1. Homo Floresiensis. Although not an animal Homo Floresiensis is the reason for our interest in insular dwarfism. With an average size of only 102 cm this human species living on the Indonesian island of Flores may have evolved from larger Homo Sapiens, or could be a species of its own. In any case its diminuitive size is an inspiration to The Incredible Shrinking Man and shows us a glimpse of a possible future.

2. The Channel Island Pygmy Mammoth from the California Channel Islands weighed only 1/10th of its contemporaries. Remains of this species, which evolved to fit within the ecosystem of the now mostly-submerged Santa Rosae island off the coast of California, were first discovered in 1856. Recently an even smaller mini mammoth was discovered in Crete with a shoulder height of just 1,13cm.

3. Also on the Channel Islands live six species of the very small Island Fox. Each species developed on a seperate island. Foxes from each island are capable of interbreeding, but have genetic and phenotypic distinctions that make them unique; for example, the subspecies have differing numbers of tail vertebrae. They’re smaller than a house cat.

4. Unlike today’s pygmy elephants, which are subspecies of their own, prehistoric dwarf elephants evolved to be much smaller than modern elephants due to their insularity on islands around the world including Crete, Cyprus, Timor and Flores. And in comparison with prehistoric dwarf mammoths dwarf elephants were much smaller: the Cyprus dwarf elephant weighed only 440 pounds.

5. The Jersey Red Dwarf Deer shrunk to only about 1/6th of its original size in less than 6000 years. It went extinct  after man inhabited the island. Endangered today are Key Deer. They can be recognized by their characteristic size, smaller than all other white-tailed deer. Adult males (known as bucks) usually weigh 25–34 kilograms (55–75 lb) and stand about 76 centimetres (30 in) tall at the shoulder.

6. Brookesia Micra, a species of chameleon of the islet Nosy Hara of the coast of Madagascar, are among the smallest reptiles in the world and have managed to survive because of their extremely small, almost invisible, size. And even at this size they have the extra ability of camouflage.

7. The Balearic Island Cave Goat wasn’t just a shorty at only 50cm tall – like crocodiles, this goat was able to grow at flexible rates, halting the growth process when food was unavailable. It is the only known mammal ever to adapt in this way, and it probably helped the goat survive for five million years before being driven into extinction by human hunters.

Much of our height is determined by the length of our legs, which in turn is determined by the activity of the epiphyseal plates. These plates, located at the end of the thigh bone, function as the center for cartilage and bonecell production during childhood and adolesence. As long as the plate is open growth continues through the division of cartilage cells that eventually turn into new bone. The gradual closure of the epiphyseal plates starts during puberty and is completed in early adulthood, at which point the legs stop growing. Early closure strongly limits height.

Rising levels of sex hormones, particularly estrogen, growth hormone and thyroid hormones, stimulate the closure  of the epiphyseal plates by producing bone faster than epiphyseal cartilage. As a result the epiphyseal cartilage narrows until it ultimately dissappears. This usually occurs at puberty, but if children have significantly high levels of  estrogen during childhood this will cause the epiphyseal plates to close earlier. During the 1950’s girls who were expected to reach greater than average height were sometimes treated with estrogen to curb growth. And although not all of them were happy about it 50 years later and there are serious health risks to consider it is a scenario that needs careful examination, for both sexes.

We must teach ourselves to desire the short. The greatest challenge to achieve the goal of smaller humans is our cultural and biological inclination to think bigger is better. Bigger as better is programmed so deeply into our subconsciousness that to think outside of its deeply embedded pattern seems almost impossible. But we must. One thing that could immediate change is deeply personal to all of us: we should change traditional desires in finding our life partner. Stimulating desire for shorter partners would mean we’d have shorter children, which in the end would create a significant decline in consumption. The Incredible Shrinking Man estimated that a proportionate reduction in height of 20% (0.8 x 0.8 x 0.8 = 0,512) could represent a reduction in resource needs of up to 48.8%. Such a reduction could be accomplished in about 4 generations.

Because an inclination for the very short is outside normative sexual behaviour  (especially for women) perhaps we should look at sexual ‘disorders’ as a source of inspiration to understand how such a paradigm change could happen. Especially microphilia (sexual desire for impossibly small women) and macrophilia (sexual fantasies involving giants) have the potential to provide us with interesting formats and an understanding of extreme size-difference related desire.

Pygmies’ short stature evolved to equip them for life in the jungle. But the exact driving force is the subject of scientific debate. It could have given them an evolutionary edge because smaller bodies are better suited to move through dense forest or because they are more able to dissipate heat. They also have significantly lowered nutritional requirements. Another possibility is that pygmies are evolutionarily programmed to stop growing right after puberty so that their body’s resources can be channeled into bearing offspring. And now there is evidence that perhaps pygmies’ small size is the result of an entirely different evolutionary adaptation, of which small size is just a side-effect.

A new study by the University of Pennsylvania studied single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that might account for traits unique to pygmies. Some of the unique SNPs cluster in an area of chromosome 3 around genes that could be involved in height. One, CISH, shuts down the receptor to a key growth hormone. We reported before on the interesting ability of the pygmies’ endocrinological system to ignore growth hormone but what is new about this study is that it suggests this may not be the result of natural selection on height (with all of the above mentioned advantages) but because genes related to height might boost immunity for malaria and tuberculosis. ”Our finding raises the intriguing possibility that short stature could be the result of better disease resistance—which is likely given the many microbes that pygmies are exposed to,” says geneticist and leading researcher Sarah Tishkoff.

We should not be surprised if the desire for shorter size will arrive as the indirect result of other desired genetic qualities such as longer life or immunity to certain diseases.

Fish kept in small tanks remain small because they produce pheromones that suppress growth. If the same rule applies to people, the small house movement may proof to be a powerful tool to curb our physical growth.

The small house movement is an intriguing architectural and social movement that advocates living in very small homes. While in most developed countries family size has been shrinking, the average home has actually grown in size. In the United States the size of new single family homes increased from 165 m2 in 1978 to 230 m2 in 2007. The typical size of a small home seldom exceeds 45 m2. Larger homes are more costly in terms of building, taxes, heating, maintenance and repair but the advantages of a small home exceed basic economics; such houses are attractive for people who want to lead a less cluttered and complicated life and reduce their ecological impact. And want to shrink perhaps?

Massive global evolutionary shrinkage may only manifest itself when it’s already too late. Even then it’s difficult to predict how much time it will take before man had adjusted to the new circumstances. Our best indication of human evolutionary shrinkage is the case of Homo Floresiensis who, when trapped on the island of Flores, shrunk to the respectabel height of just 100 cm. Unfortunately it is as yet unclear when Flores Man arrived on the island and what their height was when they did. Therefor it is impossible to determine how long it took them to shrink.

In the Pleistocene the dwarfing of large mammals trapped on islands like elephants, deer, and hippopotami occurred repeatedly. Unfortunately, as is the case with Homo Floresiensis, evolutionary rates cannot be estimated because the entry of the ancestor onto the island, and appearance of the dwarf form, are poorly dated. However Prof. Adrian Lister investigated one case of dwarfed red deer on the island of Jersey in which the dwarf is well dated and the full-sized ancestor is found in demonstrably older deposits on the island. Therefor a good estimate can be made for the duration of the isolation leading to dwarfing. The deer on Jersey were reduced to one sixth of their body weight in less than 6000 years. And although this is fast on the timescale of evolution, unfortunately it is too slow on the timescale of man.

If we are to believe this last report published by MIT Press, economic collapse is just around the corner. If that’s true it won’t hurt to prepare our children both mentally and physically for a world in which there will be a lot less of everything.  A decrease in length of only 10% already lowers your caloric needs by 27% (0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9). A 20% decrease in length almost halves your needs (0.8 x 0.8 x 0.8). It accidentally also significantly lowers your child’s environmental footprint, which in the end could help curb the doomsday scenario before it even starts. Length is determined for up to 15% by what we eat. Providing a diet with too much dairy, too much protein, and too much sugar immediately affects the future caloric needs and environmental footprint of your child. Here’s a list of things you can do yourself to keep the length of your child under control.

1. Mind what you eat. Food is responsible for 10 to 15% of unnecessary and harmful extra growth. Milk products (especially cheese which stimulates growth hormone production), Meat (because of its overdosage of protein), Sugar (easy energy). The intake of moderate amounts of these nutrients would already stop the overstimulation of our endocrinological growth engines.

2. Look for a short partner. It would be much better, and a relatively fast way to stop the global length growth of the human population if women look towards smaller men if they want children. Not only will their children live longer and healthier lives, it also helps safe the planet.

3. Move to a warm climate. It’s a fact that people in warm climates are smaller. The higher metabolic rate inspired by higher temperatures leaves you with less surplus calories to grow tall. You also don’t need a larger body mass to stay warm.

4. Embryo Screening:  Future parents can screen their baby for size, and opt for the not so tall. Again, chances are they’ll live longer healthier lives.

5. Hormone treatment: Perhaps it shouldn’t feature on this D.I.Y. list but Somatostatin is a drug to suppress the growth in people with acromegaly. The use of this medecin on a normal tall person has not been tried but it might become worth considering administrating very small (safe) dosages of this substance to control growth.

One of the most important reasons to shrink the human species is that we’ll shrink ourselves into a world of abundance. At 50 cm we’ll only need about 2% of the resources we need now. A simple grape will have the size of a mango. A chicken will be the size of an ostrich, and a sunflower the size of table. But that’s just size, and although it is a very important component it is not only about having more. It’s also about a new experience. In an attempt to understand what it would actually feel like to eat a raspberry when you’re very small, two students of the Design Academy Eindhoven, Terry Weerdmeester and Daan Kayser, prototyped one, using small water balloons filled with raspberry lemonade and a fruit flavored condom as an outer skin. Each water balloon represented one juicy particle of the raspberry which, upon biting into it, exploded into the mouth in an overwhelming physical manifestation of the feeling of abundance.

Within the overpowering global manifestations and materialisations of the desire for bigger and more, there exists precious little space to cultivate a desire for smaller and less. Few, and far between are the safehavens where dominant growth ideals are challenged and replaced by its opposite. But they exist. And we plan to create more.

There are many challenges on the road to downsizing the human species. Both physically and psychologically, as well as in relationship to the natural and built environment. To understand these challenges better (and because at this point it is one of the few serious possibilities for investigating what it will be like) we engaged in the practise of speculative modelling, also known as ‘what-if modelling‘ or ‘Luftwaffe 1946‘, after the curious practise of a specific group of model builders to fantasize about the sort of weaponry that might have come into production if Germany had actually won the war. The what-if factor makes it possible to ignore some of the immediate pratical objections, and paint our desired picture of the future, and enter it. It enables us to practise and prepare for future scenarios, and to map any difficulties that are hard to encounter in a more cerebral approach. Also, perhaps, it’ll make some of us excited about the new possibilities. Much like it has in the ostrich BBQ, the Poultry / House and the Sunflower Table. There is a fundamental shrink desire at work in model making and we intend to use it to our avantage.

Medical science should approach every single form of dwarfism as a genetic miracle and not, as is often the case, as a genetic defect. We are in danger of throwing away the baby with the bathwater. A negative approach makes it difficult to see the wonderful potential of genetic mutations. There are as many as 300 well-described ‘conditions’ that cause short stature and each single one of those may hold a piece of the puzzle towards assembling a healthy small human species. As a matter of fact, it is highly probable that, spread out over all these mutations, the genetic blue-print for The Incredible Shrinking Man already exists.