Deep-sea divers take careful measures to avoid "the bends," a painful condition where gas bubbles form in divers' blood and tissues when they ascend from the depths too quickly. Now, a new study using unlikely test subjects — pigs in diving suits — has shown that switching up the gas they breathe underwater may help divers avoid this dreaded decompression sickness.
One day, the lessons from the research may help humans dive deeper for longer and get back to the surface more quickly, the study authors say. The work was published Aug. 10 in the journal PNAS.
