In Which Our Author Imagines Again.

Lots of imagination and what-ifs here, but I guess I can get behind that. This one is "What would the world be like if people had gills/wings?" First of all, in our expedition to the hypothetical, we must establish some rules. Since this is my blog, we're gonna play by house rule. My rules. And by my rules, having wings is not the same as being able to fly. You know who has wings? Penguins, emu, certain species of buffalo, and this lady's cat:

None of those things can fly, because they don't have the proper musculature and/or bone-structure. So we are talking about a race of people with largely ornamental wings. As if humanity were suddenly an anime convention. Oh boy...

But gills, on the other hand, are a different story. Gills are an organ unto themselves. Saying someone has gills implies that that person can breathe underwater. So the sea suddenly becomes habitable. Our bodies aren't necessarily suited for life underwater, but building adaptations to our bodies that God never intended is kind of our thing. So within a decade or so, I imagine we would have mounted the food chain down there and showed it who's boss just like we did up here, and suddenly our horizons open. We just have to deal with useless, waterlogged wings.