Search Results for: art

Small-Bodied Survivor

June 9, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

Ever since 2004 when several remains of a 50.000 year old tiny bodied human species were excavated, the Indonesian island of Flores and its ancient population have been in the centre of paleontologists attention. Homo floresiensis as it was named inspired a lively and sometimes…

Abundance Fantasies: Body Inflation

June 3, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

Body inflation is the practice of inflating or pretending to inflate a part of one’s body. It is commonly done by inserting balloons underneath clothes and then inflating them. Some people have specially made inflatable suits made from latex rubber to make themselves bigger all over. Others explore this fantasy through animation,…

Royal (Feynmann) Antelope

May 16, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

The royal antelope is the smallest member of the deer family. It stands only 25cm tall and weighs a mere 3kg. It is closer in size to a pet rabbit than to other antelopes. Its evolution may have been the result of dietary strategy. Antelopes…

Red Knot Protein Transition

May 13, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

Various animal species are responding to global warming by reducing their body size. In the mid 19th century biologists had already observed the ecogeographic principle that within a broadly distributed taxonomic clade, populations and species of larger size are found in colder environments, while populations…

Shrink Agents

April 30, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

Growth, it often seems, is the rhythm of life. But not for all life. Fortunately there are animals and plants that go against the tide and embody some of the shrink values we should develop within the human species. Through a process of interspecial learning…

Full Growth Potential

April 8, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

In 1997 the World Health Organisation undertook a comprehensive review of child growth references. It stated: ‘We now have scientific evidence proving that infants and children from geographically diverse regions of the world experience very similar growth patterns when their health and nutrition needs are…

Early Heroics

March 17, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

During the excavation of a common grave at Romito Cave in Italy, P. Graziosi discovered the diminutive remains of the earliest known case of dwarfism in the human skeletal record. The specimen, known as Romito 2, exhibits features typical of acromesomelic dysplasia, including a high…

Thumbs Up for Teens.

March 15, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

We don’t yet know why but it seems younger mothers have shorter baby’s. A recent study in New Zealand assessed whether increasing maternal age would be associated with changes in height, body composition, as well as lipid and metabolic profiles in childhood. The age of women…

Japanese Miniatures: Okamura Fossil Laboratory

February 24, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

We can only speculate on what inspired the Japanese palaeontologist Chonosuke Okamura to develop his exceptional Fossil Laboratory. Perhaps he felt that the rather unglamorous study of tiny fossil of algae and vertebrates from the Ordovician period limited his imagination. Or maybe this is a…

Japanese Miniatures: Akakomugi

February 17, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

Japan is the conceptual epicentre of shrink philosophy. Our ongoing series of Japanese Miniatures collects and connects these stories and hopefully eventually will be able to inspire some of the fundamental Japanese sensitivity and desire towards smallness in the rest of the world. Akakomugi, an…

Sneaky Copulation

February 17, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

In terms of reproduction, size matters. In most species larger dominant males are preferred by the females, and perform better in male to male competition. And as a result they get to spread their ‘king-size’ genes around. But not always. Sometimes smaller is preferred as…

Dinosaur-Bird Transition

February 16, 2016 By arne hendriks 1

Wonderful things can happen when a species shrinks. In the case of a particular lineage of theropod dinosaurs that wonderful thing eventually turned out to be flight. Dinosaurs became birds. Before the bulky theropods that roamed the Earth 200+ million years ago turned into the…

Nicrophorus Vespilloides

January 10, 2016 By arne hendriks 1

In most species large males have more mating success than small males, either because females find them more attractive or because they can use their strength to intimidate small rivals. They are also more likely to have more sexual partners and be less committed fathers.…

Small Chameleon’s Mighty Tongue

January 7, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

Chameleons employ a power amplification mechanism to ballistically project their tongue as far as two body lengths from their mouth to capture prey. To do so, the tongue is rapidly accelerated off the hyoid with the tongue subsequently traveling to the prey on its momentum…

Full Length over Exon Deficient

November 14, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

The growth hormone receptor is embedded in the outer membrane of the cell. It has three major parts: 1. An extracellular region that sticks out from the surface of the cell. 2. A transmembrane region that anchors the receptor to the cell membrane. 3. An…

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…

The Cell Cycle: Gap Zero

May 23, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

The Cell Cycle is a series of articles on the mechanisms and substances that regulate cell growth. The contemporary cell climate is one of constant biological and cultural high pressure to grow, to proliferate, to expand and conquer. The Incredible Shrinking Man wants to investigate…

The Turkish Seat

April 20, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

The Turkish Seat, also known as the Sella Turcica, forms a bony throne for one of the most important protagonists in our ambitious desire for a smaller human species: the pituitary gland. It is here within the deepest part of the cavity (called the hypophysial fossa) above…

The Tall Dutch

April 9, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

The Dutch are the tallest people in the world: its women stand almost 1.71 metres (5.6 feet) tall, and its men 1.84 metres. But how the Dutch became the world’s tallest people is still debated. Now a Dutch scientist, Gert Stulp, of the London School…

The Cell Cycle: Détente

April 7, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

The Cell Cycle is a series of articles on the mechanisms and substances that regulate cell growth. The contemporary cell climate is one of constant biological and cultural high pressure to grow, to proliferate, to expand and conquer. The Incredible Shrinking Man wants to investigate…