1. Cold temperature is an Environmental stress a humans body temperature is something very serious that can react to an external temperature change human bodies can react in many ways in a cold temperature weather. for an example, by getting very sick in order to survive a body must be able to get adapted. A cold weather can cause damage due to the Homeostasis it can cause the blood vesses to constrict and the pores to close.
2. Humans have been able to adapt themselves to cold weather through four different adaptions known as the short term, Facultative, Developmental and Cultural.
A) The short term adaption would be when someone drinks hot drinks in a very cold weather the heat from the drink can help feeling warm and causing a short term decline of cold temperature.
B) The second adaption, is the Facultative it can be the increase of the oxygen in the red blood cells inside the humans body.
C) The third adaption would be the Developmental and I can be the hair on the humans skin if someone has more hair in their skin in a very cold weather the more hair you have it protects them and make them feel more warmer.
D) The fourth adaption, is the Cultural and it can be something like a central heater installed in homes. Having a central heater installed you can adapt yourself to a very cold climate because you are inside your home feeling warm even though outside it can be very cold.
3. There can be various benefit from studying human variation due to the fact that this information shows how people can adapt themselves in a cold weather for example if a person is living in the most cold areas they can have many different ways to adapt to the cold weather.
4. In my personal opinion I think that cold temperature doesn't have anything to do with race it has to do more with environmental stress rather than race and the color of some ones skin. Color doesn't have an impact on cold weather.
Capillary constriction is actually an adaptive response to cold temperatures. It is a good thing in the short term as the body tries to address the problem of cold stress. Illness is a possible secondary occurance to the body getting cold, but it isn't directly tied to cold stress. Cold temperatures cause the body to lose heat from external tissues and then from the body core, threatening the function of vital organs and ultimately leading to death.
ReplyDeleteShort term, facultative and developmental traits are all going to be physiological adaptations, things that our bodies do without us having to think about them. Drinking warm drinks would be a cultural adaptation, not short term. An example of short term would be shivering, to contract the muscles involuntarily to create warmth.
Increasing blood cells is an adaptation to high altitude stress, not to cold. A facultative trait for cold stress would be an increase in metabolism (turn up the temperature on the body's "furnace") and vaso-contriction to retain heat in the body core.
I agree that body hair would help with cold stress, but unfortunately, no human has enough body hair to make that much of a difference to cold stress. Body shape is a developmental adaptation to cold stress, with shorter, wider body shapes having less body surface area to body volume ratios, which helps retain heat in the body core. This is explained by the Bergmann & Allen's rules.
Okay on your cultural trait.
Beyond explaining how bodies adapt to the cold, what else do you think we can do with that information? Can the adaptive approach go beyond explaining how bodies adapt to help us solve other problems?
Race isn't just about skin color. It is defined by many external physical traits, such as hair type, head shape, nose and facial features and body shape, to name a few. That said, I agree that environmental stress is more of a causal factor here than race. Race is a system of categorization of humanity based upon physical traits. It is subjective, biased and changes across cultures. As such, it cannot be used to objectively understand human variation.
Hi Aileen!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog post. I found it interesting that you selected house heater as the cultural adaptation! This type of cultural adaptation is so true, I just never thought about it; I was thinking more along the lines of really warm clothes! I didn't write about the stresses of being in cold temperatures but one cultural adaptation I thought of being able to staring a fire with natural materials such as wood sticks and bark.