Cold Vs. Culture
(a) heat, (b) high levels of solar radiation, (c) cold, or (d) high altitude. Discuss specifically how this environmental stress negatively impacts the survival of humans by disturbing homeostasis
The cold affects us humans by sicknesses. The freezing cold can cause sickness including colds, hypothermia, influenza, pneumonia to just name a few. The cold affects certain body parts then the others, including nose, hands, feet, and ears. The cold can sometimes effect humans in different countries as by snow, rain causing humans not to go to work, or also destroying farmers crop lands. Some of these sickness can even lead up to even death.
Identify 4 ways in which humans have adapted to this stress, choosing one specific adaptation from each of the different types of adaptations listed above (short term, facultative, developmental and cultural). Include images of the adaptation
Short Term
Us as humans have to deal with he cold as a part of life in general. We don't have t deal with the cold all the time 24/7 though. We can use things in our home to keep ourselves from getting cold. We just don't have to use blankets or other humans to keep us warm. We can use heaters now to keep human from getting cold in the cold times.
Facultative
People have the choice if they want to live in an area that's either cold or hot. Me personally I don't like to live in an area that is cold. I don't adapt to well to the cold. I prefer to live where the sun is out and shining giving the day a bright sunny afternoon. If a person isn't a cold weather person living in the east wouldn't be a great idea.
Developmental
Certain people who live in the cold, adapt really well to the cold rather then people who aren't always around the cold. In the colder areas people seem to be more white and are easily immune to the cold. Also humans that have higher body mass are less likely to be cold in a low temperature setting then to those that have very few body mass.
Cultural
In some cultural the cold climate may prevent some people to eat certain foods. Due to that some foods can get imported but prices may raise up. Some of humans traditions may be affected due to the cold preventing them to do all what there traditions are needed to do outside.
What are the benefits of studying human variation from this perspective across environmental clines? Can information from explorations like this be useful to help us in any way? Offer one example of how this information can be used in a productive way?
By studying this stuff it makes me see and realize how certain cultures can lose there cultural in some ways in different type of climates. It also helps see how different cultures adapt differently to climate change. Information from exploration can be useful to us if maybe one day we inhabit an area that is in a cold climate.
How would you use race to understand the variation of the adaptations you listed in #2? Explain why the study of environmental influences on adaptations is a better way to understand human variation than by the use of race.
People from Latin America would have a harder time adapting because they are use to warmer climate then the northern east could would. Another understanding is that people with darker skin pigment were at a disadvantage of Vitamin D, which helps with bone growth and regulates neuromuscular functions.
Hi Gloria,
ReplyDeleteI liked your blog about the cold. I wrote about the heat, so it was interesting to see some opposite adaptations to the ones I described. I like that you mentioned pigment and the lack of Vitamin D absorption affecting people with darker skin. Also, i think there are other body parts that are very susceptible to the cold (like private parts) that would make it hard to survive in the cold without warm clothing. Imaging being a naked hominid in the glacial period... It's interesting that we adapted by making warm clothing out of animal skins and the like.
Good background explanation on cold stress.
ReplyDeleteShort term and facultative adaptations are both biological/phsiological changes the the human body undergoes to help it adapt to an environmental stress. So the use of blankets and choosing where to live will not qualify as either of those adaptations. Those are cultural/behavioral adaptations instead.
An example of a short term adaptation to cold stress is shivering. A facultative adaptation could include alternating vasoconstriction/vasodilation and increasing body weight to help retain heat.
Skin color is related to solar radiation levels. People in cold climates are not "immune" to the cold but they are adapted to the cold climate, which is the focus of this assignment. You are on the right track with the issue of body mass, but it isn't just mass. It is a relationship of low surface area relative to the mass of the body, which tends to produce a shorter, rounder body shape. This explained by Bergmann and Allen's rules, so make sure you review those concepts.
For cultural adaptations, you talk about how cold impacts culture, but the question was how culture can help adapt to cold? How about warm clothing, insulated houses, central heating, group sleeping? All are cultural adaptations to cold stress.
Okay on your explanation for the benefits of the adaptive approach.
The last question asks if race can be used to help us understand human variation but you don't mention race in your explanation. Latin America is a geographical region, not a race.
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?