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…

(Mad) Scientist Fiction

October 24, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Mankind seems so indoctrinated to think bigger that sometimes the mere suggestion that we should become smaller is thoughtlessly rejected as mad science. Ever since the 20th century our relationship with science, vacillating between science as the salvation of society or its doom, has been personified by…

Rewilding Ghost Suburbia

October 21, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

If mankind decides to shrink, and we succeed to achieve an average height of 50 centimeters as The Incredible Shrinking Man proposes, one of the most significant changes will be the increase of available space. The scale of buildings, infrastructure and distance will be enormous…

Milk

October 17, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Body height is a classic polygenic trait. About 80% to 90% of your height is inherited and 10% to 20% owed to environmental factors, of which nutrition is the most important. Of those nutrients perhaps milk is the one associated most with increased human height.…

Auxology Update

October 11, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Auxology is the highly multi-disciplinary science that studies all aspects of human physical growth. It includes such diverse fields as economics, medicine, nutrition, and anthropology. Auxologists could, and perhaps should, play a key role in inspiring the cultural shift needed in order to accomplish a smaller…

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…

Brown Fat Thermogenesis

September 25, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

If we shrink to 50 centimeters controlling body temperature becomes a real challenge. Large mass bodies can much easier deal with differences in outside temperature. But perhaps a simple evolutionary adaptation, observed in small mammals and human infants, points towards a possible solution. Biologist Per-Ivar…

Reality Repitch

September 22, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

When we become smaller the sound of our voice will change. It may need some getting used to. To try and hear possible future differences we changed the protagonist’s voice in The Incredible Shrinking Man. In the original film the voice of Scott Carey doesn’t…

Monkey Lungs

September 11, 2011 By arne hendriks 2

According to the flamboyant geneticist and evolutionary biologist  J.B.S. Haldane, comparative anatomy is largely the story of the struggle to increase surface in proportion to volume. For human lungs this meant that as we grew larger, in order to bring enough oxygen to all parts…

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…

Japanese Miniatures: Prepping Tiny Plastic Food

August 23, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

The consequences of shrinking the human body for the world’s food situation is a main topic of research for The Incredible Shrinking Man. One chicken could feed up to 100 people if we are 50 centimeters. That’s why it would be unwise to shrink agricultural…

Tall Risk

August 3, 2011 By arne hendriks 2

A study of 1,3 million women published in The Lancet Oncology finds that tall women are more likely to develop cancer. The researchers looked at the incidence of 17 cancer types, from breast cancer to leukemia, in a long-term health study across socio-economic levels. Cancer…

Downsized Flames

July 24, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Our relationship with fire is one of the oldest and most fundamental relationships with the natural environment. Fire keeps us warm, cooks our food and melts our steel. We know how much heat comes from a gas lighter, how much wood we need to heat…

Anthropology of Small Mythological Characters

July 11, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Undoubtedly myths have some responsibility for how we define our relationship with the small. Mythical explanations of the world often present small beings as metaphors for the unexplainable. The small have become a space to project human desires, fears, ideals and ideas. Knowledge of this vast…

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…

The Dactylian Five

June 24, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Frenchman Florent Marrot participated in a series of 10 weekly explorations of shrinking mankind at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam. One of his rather curious responses to the idea of becoming smaller was to divide himself into five 50 cm small versions of himself, thus…

Shrink Tourist

June 14, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Jim Hejl keeps a website called Jim’s Big Things with photos of himself near (you guessed it) BIG things. He typically finds these things near freeways, in shopping malls, in restaurants and amusement parks. It started harmlessly with a single blurry photo of Jim next to a…

Pigeon Time

June 6, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

During a workshop organized by The Incredible Shrinking Man, Robert Nelk asked himself why pigeons sit so carelessly on the road when cars race towards them. They’re not particularly bothered by the approaching danger and only fly away in the last moment. Nelk wondered if this…