1. The environmental stress of cold weather negatively impacts the survival of human beings through its disruption of homeostasis. This disruption severely effects the human body because the body is used to being heated to a particular temperature, and severe decreases from this target temperature causes tremendous stress and trauma to the human body. The cold weather thus makes it much more difficult for the various organ systems of the human body to function properly.
Short Term Adaptation: An example of a short term adaptation to the cold would be shivering. Shivering works to temporarily stop one's body from feeling cold by feeling warmer as a result of the constant muscle movement that shivering produces. However, once a person stops shivering the unpleasant cold feelings return.
Facultative Adaptation: A facultative adaptation to the cold weather would be the human body's response to urinate as to remove fluids from one's body as to lower the person's temperature. The reason that this works is because the human body sends blood to the kidneys so that the person's organs will warm up. With all this blood inside of the kidneys, the organ is forced to expel the urine to make room for the extra blood.
Developmental Adaptation: A developmental adaptation to the cold would be for people's bodies to store more fat so that their bodies would be able to retain more heat. The extra layers of fat causes for more heat to be stored inside of a person's body.
Cultural Adaptation: One cultural adaptation that human beings use to adapt to the cold weather is heavy, thick clothing. Human beings have adapted their clothing styles over thousands of years so that their bodies can be warmed by the thick clothing inside of cold climates.
Some benefits to studying the human adaptations to the cold weather would be that anthropologists and scientists can understand the causes for the genetic differences of humans in cold and warm climates, as well as perhaps to understand why people shiver and do random behaviors that some people might not understand the reason for. This information can be used in a productive way so that people can develop better clothing products to warm people's body and ward off the negative effects of cold weather. They can also use this information to better understand the human body's response to cold weather so as to develop better insulation products for homes.
I would say that one could study race to compare the adaptative responses of someone of African ancestry, for example, to someone of Eskimo ancestry. However, simply using one's skin color or race to classify a person is a poor way to classify somebody, because most races originate from a specific environment, and thus the reason a particular race would exhibit certain characterisitics is all due to their environmental stressors. For example, a group of Asians that has existed for thousands of years in a warm environment would display a different ability to adapt to the cold weather than would a group of Asians who have lived in the cold for thousands of years.
Preston,
ReplyDeleteI always enjoy stopping by your blog.
You picked a topic exact opposite of mine. I did heat.
What I found interesting is your example of facultative adaption: Urination.
It all makes sense now. Every-time I am in the cold and I have a drink, a short moment after I get a feeling like I got to go.
I also liked how the extra fat keeps us warm. Are you trying to say I need to put on a few extra pounds?
Good post.
Having also researched and discussed the effect cold climate has on humans, I considered before reading various blogs that I would choose two different topics in which to reply. Your comment, though, on urination—more specifically, your photo of Calvin—prompted me to comment on your blog. The information about urination to keep warm was something I did not come across in my research. I find it both fascinating and funny. All other information provided appears to be on topic (it looked like a few blogs misinterpreted short term adaptation in regards to question two), of note though (outside of whizzing Calvin) is the insulation of fat to adapt to a cold climate: having gained a few pounds recently, I now have a good (though probably wrong) excuse when visiting my relatives in a couple weeks.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, very good post. Excellent discussion on the stress itself. I especially like your third section regarding the benefits of the adaptive approach.
ReplyDeleteTwo points:
Urination is not an adaptive response to cold. It doesn't help a body adjust to cold temperatures and maintain homeostasis. It is a repercussion of one of our short term responses to the cold, namely vasoconstriction. Some background on this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3993814
Your other adaptations are on point.
In your final section, you seem to want to give the race approach some credit, but how can comparing two races provide you with any useful information if you don't compare their environments? You do seem to acknowledge this later in the paragraph.
Otherwise, good job.