Artificial gills for humans could become a reality | CNN (2024)

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Artificial gills for humans could become a reality | CNN? ›

Inspired by the gills of water-diving insects, Amphibio is a two-part 3D-printed garment consisting of a vest and a mask made of a “superhydrophobic” (or extremely water-repellent) material. Simply put, the porous garment extracts oxygen from surrounding water and dissipates carbon dioxide.

No. Breathing water would have at least three problems: (1) It can't deliver oxygen to the blood and tissues fast enough to support a mammalian metabolic rate. We need oxygen faster than water-breathing can provide it.

Artificial gills are unproven conceptualised devices to allow a human to be able to take in oxygen from surrounding water. This is speculative technology that has not been demonstrated in a documented fashion.

It's unlikely humans would ever grow gills, since no marine mammal has done so, but if you put humans in a situation where those who were best at swimming did best at breeding, in a few tens of millions of years you could get humans who could hold their breath for half an hour, had flippers etc.

If the Earth ever actually became a Waterworld, would humans evolve to have gills so they could breath underwater? No. For one thing, gill breathing cannot supply oxygen, or get rid of CO2, fast enough to meet the high metabolic demands of humans or other mammals.

First, your device has to actually extract enough oxygen from water to fulfill your biological needs. In theory, a device could pull enough oxygen from water to do this, but it would have to be incredibly efficient and filter enough water to collect all that oxygen.

There is much less oxygen in water than in air. You'd need to respire vast quantities of water, and pumping water into tiny spaces like alveoli would require enormous effort. A set of gills with the same surface area as a set of lungs would have to be about 10m across.

Air has much, much more readily available oxygen than water does. Originally Answered: Could humans ever be genetically modified through DNA reprogramming to breath underwater like a fish? Nope. The amount of oxygen that dissolves in water is not enough to sustain our enormous brains and our high-energy metabolism.

This means that not only do we still retain the genes for gills from our fish ancestors, but we may not be entirely done with them either.

Humans cannot breathe underwater because our lungs do not have enough surface area to absorb enough oxygen from water, and the lining in our lungs is adapted to handle air rather than water. However, there have been experiments with humans breathing other liquids, like fluorocarbons.

Could humans evolve to fly? ›

To fly! The dream of man and flightless bird alike. Virtually impossible. To even begin to evolve in that direction, our species would need to be subject to some sort of selective pressure that would favour the development of proto-wings, which we're not.

We will likely live longer and become taller, as well as more lightly built. We'll probably be less aggressive and more agreeable, but have smaller brains. A bit like a golden retriever, we'll be friendly and jolly, but maybe not that interesting.

Human evolution relies on the differences in our genes and in our ability to pass on these genetic differences (ie our breeding capabilities). Over time, the population should change as these differences become more apparent. If the genetic changes are great enough, a new species will arise.

The next step is to prove that it can be used by humans, though Kamei believes that this will require a gill with a surface of 32 square meters (344 square feet).

Oxygen from our gills would keep us from blacking out as we moved deeper, but below 200 meters or so we'd reach the bathyal zone, where it's dark and the water is 59 degrees Fahrenheit or colder [source: Britannica]. Living underwater in the shallows without some pressurized airspace wouldn't be an option either.

This injury most often happens when water gets into your airway. For example, inhaling water before your airway clamps shut from a laryngeal spasm can be a big concern. Too much water can cause lung damage and breathing problems that become serious six to 12 hours later.

Dr Bury said: “In this technique, gill cells from one fish are placed onto inserts and grown for a day. The next day, a second seed of gill cells from another fish are placed on top of the first seed – this is known as a double-seeded-insert technique (DSI).”