The Bajau people of Indonesia are the first known humans genetically adapted for diving.
The tribe has been shown to lead a highly amphibian lifestyle and has the genetic makeup to do so.
The Bajau people have lived on the coast of Indonesia for over 1,000 years, living in houseboats and spending most of their lives at sea.
As expected, they are highly skilled when it comes to free diving and spear fishing, and have exceptional lung capacity and powerful swimming abilities.
Tribal members can dive up to 230 feet using only a set of weights and wooden goggles.
“They dive repeatedly for eight hours a day, spending around 60 percent of their time underwater,” Melissa Iraldo from the University of Cambridge told the BBC.
But it turns out it’s not just their skill that helps them achieve this – they also have a unique genetic mutation known as the “sea nomad gene” that aids their diving ability: They have extremely large spleens.
A tribe evolved to stay underwater longer – BBC REELYoutube
The spleen kicks in when the body is submerged underwater and plays a key role in the human diving response: it contracts to pump oxygen-laden red blood cells into the circulation, allowing a 9 percent increase in oxygen in human blood.
So it makes sense that Bajau people’s large spleens give them a genetic advantage when swimming in water.
Dr Iraldo said: “We don’t have much information on the physiology or genetics of the human spleen, but we do know that deep-diving seals, such as Weddell seals, have disproportionately large spleens.”
“We believe the Bajau have an adaptive ability to increase their thyroid hormone levels and therefore the size of their spleen.
“It has been demonstrated that thyroid hormones and spleen size are linked in mice. If you genetically modify mice so that they lack the thyroid hormone T4, their spleen size is significantly reduced, and this effect can actually be reversed by injecting T4.”
It’s difficult to know exactly how long the Bajau were underwater, but some claim they were underwater for as long as 13 minutes.
Unfortunately, their lifestyle is now under threat.
Their nomadic lifestyle means they struggle to gain citizenship, and commercial fishing has devastated their food supplies.
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