this is what a human might look like if it evolved to live underwater meet Blobby I mean Bobby he's part human part blobfish okay maybe he wouldn't look exactly like this but over the course of this episode we're going to show you what deepsea creatures we could take traits from in order to create a human that can live underwater from collapsible lungs to tiny little teeth all over our skin we're not talking mermaids with pretty tals this is a full-on remake of the human body this is what if and here's what would happen if humans
evolved underwater we actually did evolve underwater sort of about 375 million years ago a fish named tiic had a bright idea it decided to use its fins to walk on land it was able to breathe oxygen using air sacks it conveniently had in its throat over hundreds of millions of years the tiics that decided to go on land evolved into four-legged animals this created hundreds of different kinds of species including you so instead of these fish moving to land to become humans well what if they just went back into the water what would humans look
like today well that's a pretty tricky question to answer I think we might need some help luckily I know exactly who to reach out to hi I'm derella Kamal Wang from Ocean X and we know a lot about the ocean in deep sea creatures I think we can help you out ocean X is on a mission to explore the ocean and to bring it back to the world their nextg technology Fearless science compelling storytelling and immersive experiences to educate Inspire and connect the world with our Global oceans awesome glad to hear it um so if
we were to take some of the best parts from these deep sea creatures in order to live underwater what would we need well we would need a couple of things you'd need some way to breathe or store oxygen a way to adapt to the intense pressure of the ocean a completely different body structure and not to mention different ways of hearing and seeing right well that sounds like we'll be a completely new Human by the end of it but I guess it makes sense After All Humans aren't very aquatic the deepest a human has ever
free dived is just 214 M and the ocean is a lot deeper than that the average ocean depth is 3,800 meters so that leaves us with a lot more sea to explore in order to do that we'd need to find a way to withstand the ocean pressure but we have a problem our lungs sinuses ear cavities they're all filled with air not to mention they're all designed to function at the atmospheric pressure of sea level which is about 6.6 kilogram per square inch but deep down in the ocean there's a lot more pressure for every
10 m you dive down into the ocean it's like being held down by another one of Earth's atmospheres so let's say you dive down 100 m well that would be like an extra 66 kg stacked on top of your body depending on how deep you go this could lead to a fatal injury like having your lungs collapse so how do we solve for this what characteristics of the creatures from the deep sea can we take from well we could take inspiration from whales like these sperm whales we saw in the azors they have the ability
to collapse their lungs which helps them withstand the high pressure of the ocean they also have a flexible rib cage allowing their chest cavity to compress this would help us withstand the pressure and avoid injuries like barot trauma and decompression sickness not only that but with the flexible rib cage our internal organs would be better protected right now the ocean pressure would cause our rib cage to snap and break but A Whale's Rib Cage has lots of cartilage in it which makes it more flexible and therefore safer under the ocean pressures so let's give ourselves
a whales rib cage and collapsible lungs but now that we can reach these incredible depths breathing is going to become an issue very quickly how long can you hold your breath underwater for well I'm a surfer and a scuba diver so maybe 45 seconds all right I think we need to do better than that let's see what the creatures of the sea are working with we could have gills like the clownish but due to our size they wouldn't be all that practical gills are great at extracting oxygen from water but there's a serious problem the
amount of oxygen they extract is far less than what we get from Air this means that we need a ridiculous amount of gills all along our body we probably wouldn't be able to fit enough gills on our body in order for to efficiently breathe so let's see what our other options are dolphins would be a solid Choice they're way better at breathing than humans they can exchange 90% of the air in their lungs with single breath humans can only exchange about 15 to 20% they can also store more oxygen than humans and breathe more efficiently
this allows them to die for a solid 8 to 10 minutes they do this with the blow bow at the top of their head they can swim up to the surface in just a couple of seconds they'll take a big deep breath allowing them to go back underwater for another 8 to 10 minutes so you'll probably need to put a blow hole somewhere on this new human body well since it's already close to our Airways my best bet would be to copy the dolphin and just put it right on top of our head maybe we'd
also evolve to figure out a way to seal it in order to protect from any unwanted debris or particles and just like that we're breathing underwater but this is all pretty useless if we're not the best swimmers got any advice for us I think a blue shark is exactly what you're looking for their torpedo-shaped bodies reduce drag and allows them to swim quickly through the water they also have this crazy kind of skin it's covered with these tiny almost tooth likee structures that help reduce drag and let them swim faster well that sounds awesome so
if our underwater humans had these traits maybe they'd be able to swim as fast as a shark and that's 19 kmph that would allow us to travel the ocean faster than ever before not only that but it would also make it a lot easier for us to reach the surface quickly in order for us to catch our breath okay looks like our perfect underwater body is good to go um not so fast the ocean is pretty dangerous so I'd suggest getting equipped with some survival traits okay what do you have in mind well here at
Ocean X we've done some pretty cool research on giant squids one of my favorite traits they possess is their ability to change color and produ their own light source we've been lucky enough to film these elusive creatures in their natural habitat that is really cool I I see what you're thinking now let's give our humans this ability but how would that work exactly well squ use this ability for a variety of reasons it can help them hunt camouflage competitors and even communicate it's controlled by these specialized pigment cells called chromatophores these cells are surrounded by
muscle that expand and contract allowing for a wide variety of colorful pattern some squid like the Humbolt squid are thought to use bioluminescent light organs known as photofor to backlight their visual displays much like an e-reader the hung bolt squid layers chromator on top of photo fores to make their displays easier to see in the dark awesome well let's give our humans the chromator because as much as we've evolved I don't think we stand a chance against a shark okay now our underwater human looks a lot better what do you think I'd have to agree
but even with this new survival trait we'd still have a lot of creatures we'd have to worry about luckily ocean X has got you covered go to their channel to check out their epic firsttime mission to Indonesia and all other kinds of incredible neverbe seen deep sea footage you can find out more about squids the Blobfish and this giant ISO pod
