Category: Efficiency

Subaru 360 (Ladybug)

June 17, 2026 By arne hendriks Off

At The Incredible Shrinking Man we are interested in cars as a manifestation of the things we want and are unwilling to let go off. Much as our desire, cars have increased in size. But not in Japan. For decades, the Japanese Kei car class…

Don’t Mistake a Short Man…

August 23, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

There is an interesting South African proverb that says: Don’t mistake a short man for a boy. This proverb implies that we consider size to be an indication of characteristics that are associated with children (inexperience, lack of strength, naievity, playfulness, innocence, dependence, curiosity, unconditional…

Power Amplification

November 28, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

Several species of small animals have evolved bio-mechanical power amplification to overcome the disadvantages of being small in a world dominated by bigness. Power amplification increases power beyond regular muscular levels through an elastic medium (e.g. tendons) able to catch and store large amounts of…

Japanese Miniatures: The 1/8th Project

July 5, 2022 By arne hendriks Off

Our series on Japanese Miniatures investigates the specific Japanese small scale sensitivity as expressed through a love for things like bonsai, sushi, netsuke, and capsule hotels. Perhaps Japan ‘knows’ things about smallness that may help us embrace the desire for less. The 1/8th Project is an episode…

VW (Think Small)

December 7, 2021 By arne hendriks Off

In the 1950’s, U.S. industry had firmly embraced the ideology of planned obsolescence and obsolesence of desirability to convince consumers they constantly needed to buy something new. Competing auto makers were building ever bigger and more stylised cars for growing families with baby boomer children.…

Adaptive Size

November 28, 2019 By arne hendriks Off

Architecture studio Wallgren Arkitekter and Swedish construction company BOX Bygg created the design tool Finch which can generate floor plans adapted to the constraints of a site. It allows architects to understand the potential of a specific building site, especially in terms of size and configuration. The Incredible…

Myxozoans

September 11, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

Several years ago Dutch artist Joep van Lieshout suggested that rather than reduce human height to 50cm (as The Incredible Shrinking Man has investigated) people should shrink to the size of a parasite and live in the stomach of  a cow. It’s an interesting suggestion,…

Vechur A2 Milk

November 27, 2017 By arne hendriks Off

The Incredible Shrinking Man is not big on dairy because it promotes excess growth in the body. But we’ll make an exception for the milk of the tiny Vechur cow originating from the warm and humid climate of the state of Kerala in southern India. According…

Kleiber’s Law

September 10, 2017 By arne hendriks Off

Large animals have slower metabolisms than small ones. A mouse must eat about 35% of its body mass every day not to starve whereas a human can survive on only 2%. The relationship follows a power law: basal metabolic rate (R) is proportional to the…

Micro-Livestock: A Possible Future

January 8, 2016 By arne hendriks 1

Although animal science has traditionally emphasized bigness, the 1991 report Micro-Livestock: Little-Known Animals with a Promising Economic Future shows that smallness has many advantages. If in the future the human species will become smaller, we will benefit from most of the advantages listed below. Small animals…

Pruning

July 25, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

Plants grow towards the light. And because getting to the light first is so important for plants, their endocrinological system, especially just after germination, is all about favouring the top branch to grow fast at the expense of other branches. The cells in the top…

Minidampf Monorail

January 25, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

One of the most straightforward consequences of shrinking the human species is that most of our built environment would have to be re-designed. Our cities, production facilities, agriculture and transport systems would all need to be downsized to fit our down-sized needs. And some things…

Females to Mars

October 28, 2014 By arne hendriks 1

Kate Greene took part in a NASA-funded research project called HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation). It required that she and five other crewmembers live as astronauts on the surface of Mars. For four months they were cooped up in a geodesic dome on…

Desiccation Tolerance

September 15, 2014 By arne hendriks 0

Small people have more skin than tall people, in relation to body volume. With every 10% decrease in body height, body volume decreases with 27%, while skin surface decreases with only 19%. This means, among other things, that smaller humans dehydrate more rapidly. There’s more evaporation…

Peter Gabriel on Humanoid Height

April 21, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Human prejudice against being small is a complicated mix of biological and cultural reasons. In the 1972 dystopian song ‘Get them out by Friday’ by progressive rockband Genesis, small size is appropriated for the economic benefit of a greedy project developer. The 9 minute mini-opera envisions a…