Shapeshifting is an ability that many people would like to have, and to be able to perform. Tales of shapeshifters have long since existed ever since the stone age, and sightings of shapeshifters and wolf men continue to the present day. But current modern day science says that the possibility of wolf men and other shapechangers are near impossible, due to physics, and several other important laws. But is it really? Is there still a chance, for real shapeshifters, ones who transform their physical bodies back and forth, to exist?
The answer is yes, actually.
The main law a shapeshifter is said to break when they shift is the Law of
Conservation of Mass, which says that mass/matter cannot be created nor
destroyed. But, looking at it logically, a shapeshifter doesn't necessarily
NEED to change mass. They can keep their mass while changing the rest of their
body, and the organization of the body parts inside. But how would the actual shapeshifting
process go about? Most people don't change form regularly, if at all, so it is
more than safe to say that a shapeshifter is probably born, and not made by
some virus that spreads from shifter to person from saliva/bite (think of how
easy it is to spread the common cold, and you can see why a virus isn't a
logical possibility.) If a shifter is born, and not made, that may mean that
they are built to handle a shapeshift from man to beast, and so could possibly
live through the pain that a full body shapeshift would entail, as well as
handle the strenuous process of gaining enough energy for a shapeshift. These
would definitely not be your average human beings. Still, how does the body go
about collecting all the energy needed to fuel such a process? What bodily
mechanisms allow this to happen? And most importantly, why and how does a
creature like a shapeshifter evolves to shift, over millions of millenia, while
still keeping and looking utterly human?
It is safe to say that a shapeshifter's body
would be adapted for gathering energy and saving it up in huge amounts, but not
like a regular human being's body. A shapeshifter's body would also be able to
change the entire chemistry of their body, and allow their organs to grow,
reshape, and become more animal-like, while they remain alive. And as for evolution, it is not known why or
how a shapeshifter could evolve in this way, but an interesting theory is so
that they could camouflage and look human (being safe under the guise of
humanity), while keeping their animal nature, and that it happened gradually, and over time (think one person being able to change their arm or finger, and then over time, due to marrying to other people who can also change their arms or fingers, and making children with that ability, their subsequent offspring soon gain the ability to transform their chests, and then their offspring gain the ability to change their heads, and then soon enough the population as a whole slowly gains the ability to fully transform.) Being able to be both an animal
and a human adds a remarkable evolutionary advantage-being able to hunt as one,
catch meat and scare off predators (as even looking like another animal somewhat, or changing in front of a predator would catch them off-guard, plus you have added strength), and become human and keep your family safe,
while understanding the nature of the animals around you, would be a priceless
tool to aid in survival. Even a shapeshifter who becomes an animal looked upon as prey by most would have the added advantage of better senses, and could easily get out of danger. But still we do not have all the answers, and this is
why, even though science doubts the probability of a physical shapeshifter,
there is a possibility that they could exist. Science can only deal with what
we know about the ordinary human body, that we use that as a model to show how
a shapeshift shouldn't exist (at least in regular people). But no one ever
thinks about a shapeshifter that is an unordinary person (yet still completely human), and how their body
might be adapted for the task. Certainly, there are ordinary people around us who
can do extraordinary things. You need not look further than the book of Guinness
World Records to confirm that. So why couldn't a shapeshifter be in the same
boat? Eating an airplane seems impossible, but someone has done that. Being born with a different number of chromosomes as a person yet still remaining functional and normal-looking, also seems impossible, but it happens all the time in nature, and even in humans (search up the man with forty-four chromosomes.) Being
born a shapeshifter would be no more of an extraordinary feat than that.
So, if the question is, whether real
shapeshifters, ones who transform in the physical world, could exist, then the
answer is yes! Currently, we can only hypothesize on what we do know. Science
is great at showing how a shapeshifter cannot exist, but that’s only due to
what we currently know about the world, and assuming shapeshifters have
remained hidden for so long, there may be ways that they transform that no one
has ever seen or heard of before. It would be foolish to discount the possibilities.
So for now, the answer of real shapeshifters existing is an open ended
question, but one that both doubters and believers will continue to argue
about-and probably for a long time.