The Future of the Human Race: Our Faces will Look like Anime Characters in 100,000 Years

The human race is constantly evolving. Facial features morph as we naturally select traits that we feel are most attractive. If this is the case, though, how will the human race look in the next 100,000 years? It turns out that we'll look a bit like anime characters--at least according to one scientist.

A specialist in computational genomics, Alan Kwan, and a researcher, Nickolay Lamm, have teamed up to image what the human face might look within 100,000 years. With goggle eyes, distended foreheads and orange-tanned skin, the results aren't pretty.

So how did we end up looking like cartoon characters? According to the Daily Mail, the heads of humans have been growing since our first primate ancestors appeared. Our skulls enlarged as our brains grew. This, in turn, caused us to form bigger heads and flatter features. It's therefore unsurprising that our skulls might become even larger in the future, creating the distended forehead that you can see in the image. The larger eyes, though, are another matter entirely.

Kwan believes that in 100,000 years, it's likely that humans will have colonized space. In response to the dimmer light of space colonies far from both the sun and Earth, people will have developed larger eyes, according to The Huffington Post. It's also likely that humans will possess darker skin in order to alleviate the impact of more harmful UV radiation outside the Earth's protective zone.

It's not only these features that humans will develop, though. We'll also be able to blink sideways in order to protect ourselves from cosmic ray effects, have larger nostrils for breathing in off-planet environments and even have denser hair to contain heat loss from a larger head, according to Forbes.

Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that we'll be able to select the genetic attributes of our children. Parents may choose certain hair or eye color in order to create "designer babies" that possess what are considered the most attractive attributes at the time.

Of course, this is all speculation. It's also possible that the human race could have died off in the next 100,000 years. If we survive, though, we may just get to look like real-live versions of anime characters.

Want to learn more about the project? Check out the video below, originally appearing here.