The Bajau tribe of Indonesia have become the first known people to be genetically adapted to diving.
The tribe lives an extremely amphibious life and has now been proven to possess the genetic makeup to do so.
Living off the coast of Indonesia for more than 1,000 years, the Bajau people live on boats, spending a large amount of their lives at sea.
As expected, they are very skilled when it comes to freediving and spearfishing, as well as having incredible lung capacities and strong swimming skills.
Members of the tribe can dive up to 230 feet using only a set of weights and a pair of wooden goggles.
Speaking to the BBC, Melissa Ilardo, from the University of Cambridge, said, “they dive repeatedly for eight hours a day, spending around 60 percent of their time underwater.”
But it turns out that it’s not just their abilities that help them achieve this, but a unique genetic mutation – known as the ‘sea nomad gene’ – that also helps their diving ability. They have very large spleens.
The tribe that evolved to stay underwater longer – BBC REELwww.youtube.com
The spleen kicks in when a body is submerged in water, highlighting its central role in the human submersion response. The spleen contracts to inject oxygenated red blood cells into the circulation – which can increase the oxygen in a person’s blood by nine percent.
So it makes sense that by having a larger spleen, the Bajau people have a genetic advantage when swimming underwater.
Dr. Ilardo said: “There’s not a lot of information out there about the human spleen in terms of physiology and genetics, but we do know that deep-diving seals, like the Weddell seal, have disproportionately large spleens.
“We believe that in the Bajau they have an adaptation that increases thyroid hormone levels and therefore increases the size of their spleen.
“It has been shown in mice that thyroid hormones and spleen size are related. If you genetically modify mice to be deficient in the thyroid hormone T4, their spleen size is drastically reduced, but this effect is actually reversible with an injection of T4.”
It is difficult to know exactly how long the Bajau people stay underwater, but some claim to have been under the sea for 13 minutes.
Sadly, their way of life is currently under threat.
Their nomadic ways mean they may struggle to gain citizenship, plus commercial fishing has decimated their food supply.
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