People from the Bajau (Bajao) Indonesian tribe were found to have a genetic abnormality, and they developed an unusually large spleen. Due to this mutation, some of them can hold their breath for several minutes and dive to a depth of 60-70 meters. And one of the fishermen said that he once managed to hold his breath for as much as 13 minutes.
According to scientists, this is considered the first such adaptation of people to a semi-aquatic lifestyle.
A thousand years ago, the Badjau sailed on their small Lepa-Lepa boats in the Pacific Ocean between Borneo, the Philippines and the Solomon Islands and earned the nickname "sea gypsies". This is the only people on earth whose life from birth to death entirely passes on the water. In houses, light huts on stilts, they mostly only spend the night.
Bajau children begin to swim earlier than they can walk and feel like fish in the water, playing with marine life like cats or dogs.
Scientists have found that Bajau's spleen is 50 percent larger than that of other peoples, even those who live next to them. The spleen is the main reservoir of red blood cells. As you dive, the spleen contracts and expands, pushing additional cells into the bloodstream, increasing the amount of oxygen that circulates through it. The same mechanism is observed in marine mammals such as fur seals.
Another change was shown by DNA analysis - Bajao had mutations in several genes at once, and these mutations additionally improved their quality of life while diving.
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So, one of the genes was responsible for a faster metabolism, another - for the "outflow" of blood from the extremities during diving - thus the brain, heart and lungs received more oxygen, the third gene did not allow carbon dioxide to form in the blood.
Bajao dive to the depths for fish and pearls, but now only the most stubborn are doing this. Increasingly, Bajao are beginning to settle in houses on the shore, preferring the comfort and convenience of boating. After a couple of generations, Bajao as divers may disappear altogether, turning into an ordinary coastal people, and because of this, their unique mutation may also disappear.
By the way
In the Guinness Book of Records, the breath holding record is 22 minutes and 22 seconds. It was installed in 2012 by German freediver Tom Sitas. Sitas did not eat for more than 5 hours before diving to slow down his metabolism. Then he breathed pure oxygen from a cylinder for a while.
Sitas' personal record for holding his breath without using pure oxygen is 10 minutes 12 seconds. At the same time, a German has a lung volume 20% larger than that of an ordinary person.
