1. I have selected cold.
This environmental stress can be deadly for humans. Humans need to maintain a certain body temperature to survive, generally 98.6F. It can fluctuate to one degree depending on the individual. Though, extreme cold can drop the human’s body temperature, which can result in hypothermia. Once the body temperature drops to 94F, it can become very dangerous, especially because once the temperature reaches 94f, the human body temperature drops even more rapidly.
2.
· Short term adaptation to the cold:
Humans start shivering. Shivering causes the muscles of the human’s body to function, which in short increases temporarily the body heat as a means to deal with the cold.
· Facultative adaptation:
Vasoconstriction is “the narrowing of blood vessels to reduce blood flow to the skin. It is an involuntary response to cold and reduces heat loss at the skin’s surface” (textbook).
· Developmental adaptation: because humans living in the cold have the tendency to eat more fat food in order to cope with the cold, the “shape of these human’ bodies will have the tendency to be more round and squat” (assignment).
· Cultural adaptation:
There are many ways humans can deal with the cold. They can wear warmer cloth, use the heater or make a nice fire indoors. Some cultures also drink strong alcohol as a way to increase temporarily body heat.
3. There are many benefits in studying human variation. First, we understand better the use of the word “race”, which has more to do with human variation than just the color of the skin or nationalities. Second, this information can also be useful to anyone who would like to move to a very cold region. The individual would now know what to expect or how to cope with the cold or people that live in such cold areas.
4. The word “race” has undergone many different meanings. In this specific example though, race would stand for any population who lives in very cold territories. There are certain patterns among populations that are directly linked to environmental stress. Instead of assimilating the word “race” with skin color or nationalities, people should understand the biological adaptations as a whole, which are really related to the environment.
In general, good discussion on the stress and I liked your analysis of race and clines at the end.
ReplyDeleteOne point regarding vasoconstriction: What would happen with long term exposure to cold? Would it be healthy to restrict blood flow for extended times? Or would the body need to occasionally reopen capillaries to allow tissues to receive blood flow? This is intermittent vasoconstriction, which is the facultative response. Straight vasoconstriction is actually a short term response.
For some reasons, I knew that I was missing something. The body would have to allow tissues to receive blood flow. Vasodilation and vasoconstriction would be facultative adaptations to the cold.
ReplyDeleteI got confused in regards of the facultative adaptations. Would high metabolism rate be considered as a facultaive adaptaion?
Thank you for getting back to me,
High metabolism rate by itself is not facultative, but changing your metabolic rate, increasing it, would be facultative (though I thing that is what you mean). It is essentially turning up your body's internal furnace, causing it to burn more energy when digesting food.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the information. This was initially what I wanted to talk about.
ReplyDeleteI like your thought on how the word, "race" should be about a persons environment they live in rather than the color of their skin. If we all thought that way do you feel there would be less hate?
ReplyDelete