What if you could improve the human race by splicing in some beast part ? Would we be good off with cats ’ eyes ? What if you add together the lungs of a goose , the muscles of a Pan troglodytes , and the circulatory organization of a penguin ? Let ’s discover which creature parts could enhance our rickety human bodies .
Top image : Brittany Greene / Flickr
have ’s face it . liken to most animals , humans are the sensory equivalent weight of those creepy eyeless cave fish ( only we do n’t have the beard to guide us ) . We ’re just a distressing bunch — not smell , seeing , savouring , or get wind nearly as much as any of the animal around us . It ’s time to fix that .
First , we need to start with the eyes . Our eye have rods and cones , which tolerate us to see blackened , white , and three colors , the combination of which give us the “ visible spectrum . ” shuttlecock eyes have special double cones , plus cone that contain a droplet of petroleum that filters illume and appropriate them to see more specific wavelength .
fowl can see five colors , which would not only enhance our appreciation of the existence , but give us a way to see ultraviolet light - reflection in efflorescence , off musing surfaces , and off sure fluids . Would n’t it be squeamish to know if a patch of eatage you ’re about to sit on was latterly peed on by a andiron ?
The bivalent - cone shape social organization also lets birds see apparent movement quicker than humans can — this gives them a psyche begin when it come to response time . And just to top things off , bird ’ right eye have cryptochromes , or particular proteins that permit them see magnetic field . And finally , for eye protection , we have to turn to the stately crocodile . They have an extra chapeau that they can shut over their eye , letting them see in saltwater without opthalmic damage .
But what trade good are eyes if they just function at night ? Other creatures possess a layer of cells called the tapetum lucidum . It ’s a bare contemplative layer at the back of the eye that shoots incoming light out across all the light receptor again , double the incoming amount of sparkle . This is why cat ’ eyes beam in the night .
But why swear on eye ( which can only see the present tense ) when we can rely on smell ( which can see the past ) ? dog ’ signified of odor appropriate them to understand what happened in a seat days , week , month , or long time ago . And it does n’t even take a elephantine tweak . They just have 230 million olfactory cells , or about forty time as many as we do . There has to be a way of making our rhinal cavity fully grown or more efficient .
Fractals have shown us that it ’s potential to make pit in tissue , and pits in those pits , and pits in those cavity , until the entire tissue becomes like a sponge with a massive amount of open area . True , that would make the olfactory organ more soft , but it ’s already a fragile arena .
And in conclusion , there ’s taste . To be honest , I do n’t think we require to improve tasting , but there are a few things we could do to make it more fun . If we want to taste thing right on now , we have to put them in our mouth . This is both unsanitary , and trigger the instinct to masticate , which then pulls the thing down into our tum , and brings up the calorie count .
mudcat have taste bud all over their body — if we had one segment of our out body that could just try out affair for us — say a patch of skin on one forearm — we could just tape a musical composition of chocolate to our arms and have dessert all morning .
But sense just is n’t enough . compare to the idol of the animal kingdom , we ’re not fast — and although our sizing gives us an vantage over many animals — we ’re not very strong . Something postulate to be done about this .
Because brawn are complicated , it ’s best to turn to our near - relatives for improvements . The fast nation creature is still the chetah , but its speed consist mostly in its figure and in its outsized warmheartedness . We need something that will make the factual muscles fast . A bat ’s muscles move around a hundred time as tight a human muscles do ( and the muscles in a cricket bat ’s larynx move faster than that ) .
Scientists believe the author of this speed is the sarcoplasmic second stomach , a store of Ca in the squash racquet ’s muscle cells that outpouring into activity and make the muscles contract extremely quickly . We ’d have to increase our calcium intake , but this is worth choking down some yogurt .
Next we need strength , and for that we demand to go a little skinny to home base . Pan troglodytes brawniness fibers are approximately five times as potent as human muscle fibers . This has a specific fix . There are genes , in humans , that limit muscle development . These same gene are in chimp , but they ’ve been deactivated . Deactivate them in humans as well , and they ’ll have more muscle development . Chimpanzee brawniness roughage are also longer than human being ’s brawn fibre . The fibers contract to take a muscle , so a Pan troglodytes ’s musculus contraction will by nature do more piece of work than a homo ’s .
So far we ’ve looked at the superficial stuff — allow ’s take a look at the inside , starting at the bottom of the macrocosm . Down in Antarctica , penguins spend full winters cower around together to live the elements . Although their bodies are layer with insulant , their feet are exposed .
It seems like either the understructure would freeze off , or the incoming rush of cold blood would immobilise the rest of the penguin . They ’ve gotten around this like many cold - conditions animal do : splendid plumbing . extroverted blood , about to be exposed to the cold and lose a lot of its heating , is routed right near incoming ancestry from the feet . What happens is a heat - exchange . The nerveless incoming blood is give rush of heating before it comes back into the body . The outgoing blood cools down , still delivering heat to the extremities , but losing some of its uttermost heat , which would have been sucked aside by the Methedrine and snow anyway . It ’s a much more efficient system , made with only a few alteration to blood vessel placement , and we should have it .
While we ’re making adjustments to how the blood flows , let ’s tweak the blood itself Why devil adding that all the way eyelid that we get from crocodiles if we ca n’t go in the water ? There are a few problem with aquatic life – the primary one being that we need melodic phrase .
The secondary problem is that , when we have melodic line but we go too far down , it dissolves into the blood and then bubbles up again during the freeing of pressure when we surface . These bubbles can defeat us . seal do n’t seem to have this trouble . They plunk deep , and they do it without bubbles in the bloodline . But these bubble are a effect of pressurized flatulency . And when you bring gas ( such as the gas in the lung ) underwater , it will always be under pressure . That ’s physics , not biota . The sealing wax ca n’t defeat that , but they can circumvent it .
Seals only empty their lung of atomic number 8 before they plunge . No gasoline , no pressure difference , no bubbly rakehell . They cope to do this by transferring all the oxygen in their lungs to the massive quantity of Hb and myoglobin , two proteins that grab atomic number 8 and ferry it around the body , in their stemma . We have these protein as well . We just need more . Then we ’d be able to dive like seal , and stay underwater .
But what ’s the good of have a lot of O underwater if we ca n’t even oxygenate ourselves on realm ? Put a human too far up in the universe and they ’ll just flat - out drib over from want of atomic number 8 . The increase in Hb and myoglobin will help that , but how to get oxygen in there in the first place ? Once again birds take to be our breathing in .
The Himalayan goose is the gross oxygenator . It literally lift itself over Everest doubly a year when its migrating , and for that to exploit its muscles need to be aerate with as little effort as potential . It does this by having little balloon at the bottom of its lungs . When oxygen floods into human lung , it fills the niggling Sac call alveoli inside each lung . Blood passes along the alveolus paries , picks up oxygen , drops off C dioxide , and then the lungs expire , pushing the gas out again .
During this expiration menses , humans do n’t attract in any more atomic number 8 . But these geese do . The minor balloon - corresponding sacks at the bottom of their lungs fill up with superfluous air during the breathing in . When human beings exhale , the sacks thrust out that air , which again fill up the lilliputian alveoli with atomic number 8 . The fathead literally gets air doubly with each breather . If we were to organise ourselves right , even breathing would be easier .
And so we have the ultimate human . No messing around in the brain . No computed tomography - like face or giant tooth . No paws , no hook , no yaw maws . Just a few internal tweak that could let us swing through the Tree like chimps , plunge like seals , run race with cheetahs , breath sluttish underwater and above the clouds , and see and smell everything . It ’s enough to make you imagine that scientists call for to get a little madder .
Bottom image : Brian Bolland ’s and Travel Foreman ’s Animal Man . eye Image : Funny Crazy Animal Photos . Bat Image : Wiki CommonsSeal Image : US Fish and Wildlife Service . ViaPBS , Web Exhibits , University World News , eHow , require a Biologist , andAudobon Magazine .
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