Category: Dwarfism

Munchkin Statistics

September 6, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

Statistical research on the 124 actors who played the Munchkins in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz shows that little people live longer. Through Wikipedia we were able to calculate projected life expectancy and actual date of death of 77 actors, both male and female and…

TEDx Lecture on Shrinking

June 10, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

During TEDx Brainport we gave a short talk on some of the reasons the human species should shrink, some of its possible consequences, and how it could be done. See it HERE.

Island Dwarf Zoo

May 15, 2012 By arne hendriks 3

The Dwarf Zoo is a growing archive 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…

1/6th Red Deer

April 8, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

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 has adjusted to the new circumstances. Our best indication of human evolutionary shrinkage is the case of Homo floresiensis…

Overcoming the Uncanny

March 12, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

People are often disturbed by the idea of shrinking the human species. The confrontation with unusually small-sized adults sometimes triggers a psychosomatic sensitivity  also known as the uncanny. The uncanny is a Freudian concept of an instance where something is familiar, yet foreign at the same…

Messengers of the Small Truth

March 4, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

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…

Complex Desire

February 19, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

Since growth is a function of the fundamental desire of DNA to replicate itself, it is very difficult to obstruct. Any genetic mutation that surpresses this fundamental desire can be considered a revolutionary force. The refusal for increased growth goes against the system. Unlike the…

Krill Adaptations

January 28, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

Because environments vary with both predictable patterns and with unpredictable but recurring events, ecologists have long been interested in the ecological adaptations that organisms use to survive periods in which the environment may be exceptionally harsh. One of the most interesting adaptations observed in the…

Somatostatin Zebrafish Farm

January 18, 2012 By arne hendriks 2

One of the most promising consequences of downsizing the human species is the change in space and time it’ll take to grow food. In several research installations at Food Forward (a look into the future of food) The Incredible Shrinking Man investigates new possibilities. Like the…

The Larons

November 9, 2011 By arne hendriks 2

People living in remote villages in Ecuador have a genetic mutation that may just hold the key to shrinking mankind. The villagers have a rare condition known as Laron syndrome. They are generally less than three and a half feet tall, they are proportional, and interestingly, they are…

Human Hypervariability

November 2, 2011 By arne hendriks 2

Humans are an extremely hypervariable species. There is a large intraspecial difference between its largest and smallest members. The smallest adult person, Chandra Bahadur Dangi, is less than 55 centimeters tall, while the tallest person that ever lived, Robert Wadlow, reached a height of 272 centimeters. That makes…

Small Brain Issue

October 2, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

It seems there are ways for the brain to retain intellectual capacity even when if considerably smaller. The study of Homo Floresiensis shows that despite being only 100 cm tall, and with the brain-size of a Chimpansee, he possessed technology we’d normally only expect of…

Court Dwarfs: Seneb & Bes

September 26, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

In ancient Egypt a remarkable number of dwarfs gained prestigious roles within the dynasty. This can be concluded from the remains of their lavish burials. Egypt’s best known dwarf was Seneb, which means healthy. His career is documented on the false door and the plinths of…

Relic Paulina

September 8, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

The Dutch are among the tallest people in the world yet the smallest girl that ever lived was from the Netherlands. Johanna Paulina Musters’ extremely small stature, she was only 61 centimeters, her talent for acrobatics, singing and dancing, and the ability to speak several…

The ORC

June 26, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Louise S. Bicknel of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medecine and Ernie M.H.F. Bongers of the Institute for Genetic and Metabolic Disease discovered which 5 genes are responsible for Meier-Gorlin Syndrome, a form of primordial dwarfism. Unlike with Dwarfism of Sindh MSG does create…

Small Wonder

May 14, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Jyoti Amge is the world’s smallest girl. She weighs about 5 kilograms and at 58 cm’s her height  is really close to The Incredible Shrinking Man’s projected future size of 50 centimeter. She has been the subject of numerous documentaries and enjoys her star status.…

Of Snell Mice and Men

April 17, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

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…

Homo Sindhiensis

March 6, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

If anthropology teaches us one thing it is that the human species was, and is, in a continuous state of development. Homo Sapiens, much like Homo Floresiensis, probably will eventually change into a new species, a species better equiped to deal with the challenges of…

GHRHR

February 11, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

It seems as if nature itself is already investigating ways to counter hypergrowth, overpopulation and overconsumption. It’s creating perfectly proportioned, but small, human beings. Pituitary dwarfism, also known as Dwarfism of Sindh, is a form of growth absense where all parts of the body grow equally slow. At…

Dwarfism of Sindh

January 18, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Donald Platt points out an interesting case of dwarfism in Pakistan. In 1994, an article appeared in a Pakistan newspaper, describing the existence of a cluster of familial dwarfism in two remote villages in the lower Indus valley.  The subjects were perfectly proportioned and in…