The Case for Making Humans Smaller

When Arne Hendriks, a 6” 4’ Dutchman, faced audience members at TEDxBrainport in 2012, he smiled apologetically. “I have some bad news for you,” he said. “You’re not short enough.” Hendriks believes that the planet’s growing population—currently at 7 billion—is unsustainable. His solution? We should shrink ourselves to 50 cm, around the height of a chicken. “I think we can actually achieve that,” he says.

Hendriks, an exhibition maker and historian, chose the 50 cm figure for several reasons: It’s rounded down from the shortest adult ever recorded, the 57-cm tall Gul Mohammed from New Delhi; it’s the average height of a newborn baby, a stature