Extraordinary Dwarfs | National Geographic

the most common of the 200 or so types
of dwarfism produces people who stand
barely four feet above the ground
fully grown a far rarer condition
creates the smallest people on earth who
rise just three feet in the air making
other Dwarfs look like Giants I feel
like I want to powder your nose and a
new unexplained form of dwarfism has
been discovered in just one person on
the planet inside and out
they are truly extraordinary humans here
the Campbell family who live in Maryland
is like any other American family except
that they operate on a lower altitude
than most you go show mama where you put
your coat Susie Campbell is 46 years old
I’m a stay-at-home mom domestic engineer
but at 3 foot 10 inches she’s the size
of a typical six year old she stands a
foot and a half shorter than the average
adult female even so Susie has fully
adapted to life on a different scale I
care about my hair color that kind of
stuff but being a dwarf I’ve never had
an issue with it never Susie like some
70% of dwarfs has the type called
a cond replace’ people with this
condition are called a cons they are
born average-sized but their skeletons
take on their distinctive shapes as they
grow older
curiously they’re not smaller in every
way
for example Susie’s head is actually
bigger than average and her torso is the
same as a normal-sized person but it’s
in their half-size thigh and upper arm
bones where dwarfs part ways with
average people the way in which a cons
like Susie walk is due to another
unusual skeletal feature their knees
tend to bend outward
and the more extreme the been the more
pressure is applied to the joints the
legs bow because in a cons outer shank
bone the fibula grows longer than the
inner bone the tibia
this causes the legs to bend outward
compared to average-sized adults their
unique leg design forces a cons to walk
in a distinctive way they walk with a
waddle taking short steps and swaying
from side to side the movement requires
more energy per step than for an
average-sized person walking or standing
Susie’s height gives her a unique sense
of scale when I am sitting in a chair
and an average-sized person is sitting
next to me we’re almost the same height
the time of difference is when we stand
up Suzy’s a Kandra pleasure is caused by
a genetic mutation in a gene that comes
from her father her parents are both
average-sized as are her siblings and
this is true of some 80% of a cons I’m
the only one with dwarfism in my family
both my brothers are over 6 feet the
mutated gene responsible for causing a
Kandra pleasure is located on the end of
one of the 46 human chromosomes pick
that to mama please chromosomes are long
chains of DNA that look like twisted
ladders a gene is a section of that
ladder genes carry code for building the
human body they are blueprints for how
the body grows everything from the
internal organs to a person’s physical
appearance the ladders cross pieces are
chemicals that make up those
instructions in a Kandra pleasure one of
these cross pieces happens to be the
wrong chemical this mutation most
dramatically affects the growth of bone
particularly those in the arms and legs
this genetic glitch interrupts the usual
process that makes them grow