The Incredible Shrinking Man

Even within a speculative research such as The Incredible Shrinking Man it is difficult to imagine what the average human body will look like if we decide to shrink to 50 centimetres. However, based on the specific physical adaptations to environment and our various diets and different functionalities of the human body, perhaps some presumptions [...]

In most genetics research, Homo sapiens is represented by small fish like Danio rerio (zebrafish)  and Oryzias latipes (Japanese rice fish). Both are important model organisms, representing man in developmental genetics, neurophysiology and biomedicine. When we tinker with genes what happens to the fish is most likely to happen to us as well. If the [...]

There’s a 40% difference in height between the shortest 5 percentile and the tallest 5 percentile of the adult human population. That puts humans amongst the Earth’s most hypervariable species. Shrinking the body will create an even greater height gap, Younger generations will be shorter than older ones until (after several generations) the entire population [...]

Earth is turning into a global city. Over half the world’s population lives in urbanised areas and those cities are taking up more and more space.  Most of the rest of the world is organised to supply food and resources. Even so, cities are the most efficient way to support our growing populations. Yet citizens are [...]

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 [...]

Growth is a human default mode. Every individual, every reproduced cell and in fact every selfish copy of our DNA, intends to proliferate. From an evolutionary perspective such a default mode made perfect sense in the year 4.000 BC when the world population of Homo Sapiens stood at a modest 8 million. As the population [...]

If we decide to shrink the human species to 50cm our livestock needs will shrink with us. We’ll only consume about 2 to 5% of the food we consume today. The meat of one chicken could easily feed 100 people and one egg alone would be enough to make an omelet for 25 to 30 people. Poultry [...]

One of the most promising advantages of shrinking the human species would be the abundance of food. A single chicken could feed up to 100 people. But perhaps it’s not just a matter of abundance. We might encounter some unsuspected differences in the way we relate to food. To understand our future relationship with a [...]

Mice and men display striking genetic similarities in hormone dependent growth disturbances. If a mouse responds in a certain way to a genetic mutation, chances are that a human will respond in similar fashion. The first dwarf mouse was discovered by Nobel Prize winner George Snell in 1929. Later during the sixties research on the Snell mouse [...]

Why do we propose to make The Incredible Shrinking Man 50 centimeters? Why not 100 centimeters, or 75?
The first reason is that 50 centimeters, even if very small, is not hard to imagine since it is the average height of newborn babies. However, newborn babies are heavier since they have different proportions. The Incredible Shrinking [...]