Do you think its possible for humans to be able to have gills as well as lungs? Or, in place of lungs, have a replacement of gills and live in water? ..and what do you think, personally? for yourself? human kind? is it even possible?
if our species doesnt wipe itself out, maybe we'll someday evolve into having gills, while the polar ice caps melt?.. who knows
It would be awesome to be able to have both, but sadly the human species as we know it will never have them (we would become a new species). Also, it would take thousands of years of evolution...blah blah blah. If we only had gills...how would we smoke? It would be cool to be able to chill underwater though. Gotta work on both. Heh
im positive before we wipe ourselves out (and evolve to gills) we will experiment human life, gill option. im certain. ..or just hoping heh! hehe..eh...!
The only way I could see human descendants having gills would be if it was like 400 million years from now, in which case they'd be nothing like modern humans, but a whole different kind of animal altogether. Keep in mind that our ancestors 400 million years ago were amphibian-like animals that were just evolving air-breathing lungs. But I think our evolutionary branch is near an end. We are the 6th mass extinction, after all.
SCIENCE. lets not forget what we can do in 2004. obviously, if we took the gill, or the gill/lung option, we would have to survive in either an aquatic or aqua/land environment.
If we became aquatic, wouldn't we have to have fins or at least flippers? Or perhaps become mermaids and mermen? Wouldn't we probably go for scales instead of skin or hair? What about our bodily temperature control? We might want to become cold blooded. Or not. Could we then be trained to do underwater demolition for the navy? Instead of air filled submarines would we want water filled busses? Would there then be mad (sea) cow disease? is there any kind of seaweed that will get you high? How do you smoke it underwater? Won't the papers get all soggy? Will your lighter work? Would we have air-bongs instead of water bongs? Oh! the possibilities!!! It all simply boggalates the mind. I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE FOR IT!!! I prefer to boggulate my mind with good ol' MJ! Using air! Ain't wake and bake wonderful? Can anybody add to this? Why would they want to?
Don't forget how evolution really works... We won't just start growing gills if something like the polar ice caps melting, like stated.. There would have to be humans allready born who have gills, and they'd survive, everyone else would die, and then they would keep reproducing... You can't GET traits, you have to be born with them..
If you think about it you could THEORETICALLY tap your blood supply to a set of gills. As to evolution we won't evolve any more because we don't need to. Let's not forget that evolution is a process which comes from an organism's need to adapt. Take bacteria. Their genetic makeup might mutate so that they produce an enzyme which will break down a specific antibiotic. This probably happens in less than one in a million individual bacterium- without that antibiotic present there's no reason why that bacterium should be more sucessful than the other bacteria around it. There will, in all likelihood be intraspecific competition for resources such as food for example meaning that it won't pass on it's genes as successfully to it's daughter cells. If there is antibiotic present and all other little bugs die because of it then the happy little mutant bacterium will go on to reproduce with almost unlimited resources. The daughter cells, containing the genetic code for, "produce enzyme x to break down antibiotic y" will spread and you have an antibiotic resistant strain. It's much the same in any other organism that has evolved. Did you know that they reckon C-Sections in pregnant women are going to become more and more common? Why? Because in the days of old when a baby's head din't fit through the pelvis the baby and mother will die. Since C sections if the baby's head doesn't fit it's just cut out and the mother is sewn up again. The mother doesn't die and can go on to produce more babies with the small pelvis large baby head gene which will then go on to produce similar children of its own. IT's the same with gills. We have no need to evolve them so we won't. Oh and polar ice caps wouldn't flood the earth like in water world. I think at most only 25% of the land on earth would be gone (this isn't an exact figure but I saw a map of projected flooding and this is the figure I guessed). It means we can say bye bye to Bangladesh and anything in a flood plain which is bad, but I don't see world floods because of it.
if you had gills you couldnt smoke period, the smoke would go out through the gills. screw gills tho man, i want wings! that we be super sweet, flyin around all fucked up and shit...yah
id rather have lungs than gills because u cant really inhale smoke with gills, u can just sort of walk through it....