from the next-up:-compare-top-tier-athletes dept.
Bajau people, an ethnic group of "sea nomads" in Southeast Asia, have evolved bigger spleens that aid their frequent diving activity:
In a striking example of natural selection, the Bajau people of South-East Asia have developed bigger spleens for diving, a study shows. The Bajau are traditionally nomadic and seafaring, and survive by collecting shellfish from the sea floor.
Scientists studying the effect of this lifestyle on their biology found their spleens were larger than those of related people from the region. The bigger spleen makes more oxygen available in their blood for diving. The researchers have published their results in the academic journal Cell [open, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.03.054] [DX].
Located close to the stomach, the fist-sized spleen removes old cells from the blood and acts as a biological "scuba tank" during long dives.
The Bajau people live across the southern Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia and, according to rough estimates, number about one million people. "For possibly thousands of years, [they] have been living on house boats, travelling from place to place in the waters of South-East Asia and visiting land only occasionally. So everything they need, they get from the sea," first author Melissa Ilardo, from the University of Copenhagen, told the BBC's Inside Science programme.
Also at Scientific American and GEN.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @02:09PM (4 children)
Poles have evolved larger sex organs to make up for their apparent lack of intelligence.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday April 22 2018, @04:52PM
"Says de dumb Polack who can only wish, eh Edit!"
--Archie Bunker
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @06:40PM
I thought it was because they don't have access to oversized American 4x4s.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday April 22 2018, @06:42PM (1 child)
I don't think all Polish women are stupid.
Think about Marie Curie, for example. Glow-in-the-dark papaya instead of glow-in-the-dark peach?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @11:28PM
Marian Adam Rejewski, who reconstructed the Nazi German military Enigma cipher machine sight-unseen in 1932.
(Score: 5, Funny) by FatPhil on Sunday April 22 2018, @02:23PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by idiot_king on Sunday April 22 2018, @02:40PM (9 children)
Race realist idiots incoming in 3...2...1...
But seriously though, this is fantastic. Just goes to show how antifragile humans are to their environment.
Makes me wonder how humans on the surface of Mars or the moon will change to adapt to their environments.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BK on Sunday April 22 2018, @02:57PM (7 children)
Not sure what you mean by 'race realist idiots'. Can you at least set up a strawman for us? Or if its complicated, a car analogy could help.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @03:55PM (3 children)
I think he means people that claim races are different, and all people do not belong to the same magical group. In other words the "sane".
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @06:43PM (2 children)
There is more variation within a single race than between the average of any given race. This story is actually a good example of how environment affects biology, so any group of people that has been disenfranchised and systematically actually CAN blame their oppressors for the plight of their progeny.
Fools like you just desperately want scientific excuses for your various levels of bigotry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:10PM
Sorry, but it is not. The spleens in question were actually smaller than usually reported (see my other post).
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Friday April 27 2018, @09:29AM
Depends on the attribute. For intelligence and strength, yes. For skin-colour, no.
Yup, there are lots of racist idiots looking for any excuse, but I find it's best to be slow to land that accusation on anyone specifically.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @04:21PM (2 children)
Hang out on soylentnews for a day and you will see lots of idiots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @05:15PM
You've already met their king!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday April 22 2018, @11:57PM
Adaptation to environment, sort of a survival trait?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:07PM
No, it shows how low research standards have fallen. Compare the spleen volumes to those reported in other papers and they are actually smaller than usual (see my post below for refs).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 22 2018, @03:03PM (3 children)
In keeping with the tenor already set here, the question is, "Are they still human?"
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Sunday April 22 2018, @04:53PM
No: now they're homonyms.
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 22 2018, @06:03PM
I'd prefer a switch to baritone.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @06:48PM
they can produce perfectly healthy offspring with other humans.
so yes, they are still human.
just like white blond blue eyed people are still human, even though the original homo sapiens were somewhat brown, with black eyes and dark brown hair. (for confirmation, look at the remote community in SouthEast Africa who are known to have the most diverse genomes on the planet).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:05PM (3 children)
Lets see, the spleen size of the Bajau people (the ones with the supposed large spleens) is ~160 cm^3 on average (figure 1):
http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(18)30386-6 [cell.com]
This is on the low end of spleen size measurements:
333.6 cm^3 (https://www.ajronline.org/doi/abs/10.2214/ajr.184.1.01840045)
500 cm^3 (https://www.ajronline.org/doi/abs/10.2214/ajr.181.6.1811615)
219 cm3 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6974875)
184 cm^3 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4549594/)
214.6 cm^3 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9038125)
The idea that they have these super huge spleens that help them to dive is just wrong. At absolute best you could say they have typical sized spleens and the Saluan people have smaller spleens than usual.
I don't know how people keep falling for this crap. When will people realize that Cell, Nature, PNAS, and Science are tabloids and nothing written in there should be believed?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:56PM
Previous research on spleen size in divers they somehow missed (336 cm^3):
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2012.00173/full [frontiersin.org]
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday April 23 2018, @12:24PM (1 child)
I kind of agree. Get the best swimmers/free divers in the west, and compare.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @01:11PM
That is found in one of the links: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2012.00173/full [frontiersin.org]
The best divers had spleen volume near 540 cm^3 and the worst near 270 cm^3. You can see these are all much larger than what was seeh here. The Bajau had relatively small spleens, but the Najuan even smaller...
And how was this not cited? And why didn't they report the spleen sizes of their european cohort?
Also the spleen can grow or shrink due to illness/diet/environment, so taking a single measurement doesnt mean much. Perhaps the Bajau were just more stressed than the Najau when taking the CT scan since they were landsick? Also they make no mention of whether the person segmenting the CT images was blinded...So I dont even accept that comparison as representing any permanent or even real phenomenon.
Further, they collected no data on diving ability vs spleen size in these people, only implying that at least one person could go 200 ft deep. The world record is over 1000 ft, and Ive seen people claimed to get 200 ft after only a year of training, so these abilities are not superhuman either.
There are so many problems with this Bajau spleen paper I think it is a joke or a test.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @09:34PM (3 children)
mmcmonster is a physician. [soylentnews.org]
He hasn't commented in a while. [soylentnews.org]
Dunbal is also a physician. [soylentnews.org]
It's been much longer since he last commented. [soylentnews.org]
It would interesting to get their input on this.
AIUI, the spleen processes blood cells, taking old ones out of circulation and releasing new ones.
I don't see why a bigger spleen would be especially helpful in this context.
Now, red blood cells are what carry oxygen to the body's cells.
If there was something special going on with the number|efficiency of those, I can see that making a difference for divers.
The lungs oxygenate the blood, so I could see a possible connection with those organs if they were somehow better.
Muscles that are more efficient than normal could also be a plus for these folks.
...but the spleen??
Not seeing it.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @10:38PM (2 children)
Why not just look it up yourself?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @11:03PM (1 child)
Clearly, you aren't an expert at anything have have never been asked for an expert opinion.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @11:46PM
Actually when I look up spleen diving there are only hundreds of stories about this crappy paper... Even the wikipedia article about the Bajau is updated already to include it. Why is there such a push to get this obviously false "discovery" out there?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @04:21AM (2 children)
Almost all the posts have been deleted:
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/8dh4pg/a_rare_mutation_among_the_bajau_people_lets_them/ [reddit.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @03:03PM
Well, that's /r/science for you.
(Score: 1) by laserfusion on Tuesday April 24 2018, @11:56AM