• Question: do you believe we could eventually evolve to be able to live under water?

    Asked by kayleighlouise to Dave, Glo, Sean on 23 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Sean Clement

      Sean Clement answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Hmmm, It depends. Evolution is based on the survival of those creatures best adapted to the environment around them. At the moment, we’re land animals through and through. As well as some people can swim, we can’t survive in the water without something to keep us out of it for long periods such as a boat. However, this doesn’t mean that we couldn’t evolve to live underwater, or at least survive underwater for longer. To fully adapt from our current method of living to something that could live underwater would take a very, very long time though!

    • Photo: Dave Sproson

      Dave Sproson answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      If there was a genuine reason for us to need to live underwater, then I suppose it may be possible, given enough time. However, I would think that by the time we had evolved that ability, whatever we had evolved into almost certainly wouldn’t be recognisable as human.

      Of course, there’s every possibility that genetic engineering could one day give us that ability, but this sort of genetic engineering is usually considered to be unethical in humans.

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