One of the main environmental stresses that has been put upon the human race is getting through the cold. The cold is very important to stay away from in order to survive because it could be life threatening. One can either get used to the cold weather or one can get really sick and develop hypothermia which is when ones body falls below required temperature.
2. -There are many ways to see that one is cold, but the most obvious is when one has red cheeks. having red cheeks is when ones body temperature falls. This is a Facultative adaptation because ones DNA does not change but their genes do turn on and off when they get cold.
- Another adaptation would be a persons body mass, which in all technicality the bigger you are the less you will get cold. When one has more to hide their skeleton they are less likely to become cold. This is called a Developmental adaptation, this is when it is in our genes or DNA to be thicker than we used to be.
-Shivering is a short term adaptation because a persons body is too cold to handle so the body starts to move faster and faster in hopes to warm up. Our bodies only do this for a short period of time.
- Lastly a cultural adaptation to cold is clothes. Humans have learned that wearing clothes will actually help them warm up.
3. It is more beneficial for humans to study humans through environmental clines because through the clines we can see the parts of natural selection and will give us a chance to see how we adapt and change.
4. Using race to understand variation in adaptation would be very subjective, because it would only teach us how one race is and all races are not the same some may be similar but many are complete different. For race in environmental stresses with cold goes for almost most races, a few races get hotter or colder easier but they all do the same because that is how humans in a whole adapted. Environmental influences is beneficial because people study the whole environment and get a feel for every race; whereas, just studying race will take too long to look into each one and every race is different so you would have to look at each and every race individually.
hey Rouba, your post is really interesting, I like how you thought about clothes as a cultural adaption, my mind went straight to food and I thought about having soup, and I believe that we can use race to understand the variation on adaption, but we have understand that each race is different and it can adapt to the same conditions in different way.
ReplyDeleteand I'm not sure if getting red checks is a facultative adaption.
ReplyDeleteFor clarification on your explanation of cold stress, tissue damage and hypothermia are the primary dangers, with hypothermia possibly leading to organ failure and death.
ReplyDeleteShivering is a short term adaptation to cold.
Remember that adaptations just benefit homeostasis in some way. So how do red cheeks help? Red cheeks are actually an indicator that the body is temporarily opening up the surface capillaries ("vasodilation") to warm the skin provide it with nutrients but this is a temporary thing. The body will alternate this with closure of the capillaries ("vasoconstriction") to prevent excess loss of body heat through the blood stream.
For your developmental trait, it isn't necessarily an issue of "covering the skeleton". Body shapes in cold climates are, developmentally, shorter and heavier overall. This is related to the fact that if the surface area of the body is relatively small compared to the body core (and relationship which produces a shorter, heavier body shape), that means less heat is lost from the body core since it is farther from the skins surface. Make sure you review Bergmann and Allen's rules that explain this relationship.
Okay on your cultural adaptation but will any clothes help or can certain clothes help with cold stress more effectively than others?
I agree with the benefits you identify for the adaptive approach, but can you think of how this information can be used in a more applied way? Can this information be used in the medical field? Can it help us design better clothing for cold climates?
"Using race to understand variation in adaptation would be very subjective, because it would only teach us how one race is and all races are not the same some may be similar but many are complete different."
You are on the right track here. Race is entirely subjective, but not because you would make assumptions of one race over another. The problem is that race is a social construct, subject to the biases and preconceptions of individual cultures, and it is designed to divide humans into categories, not to explain variation. It is not a biological/genetic construct, so how can it be used to objectively explain biological/genetic variation?