Human Variation & Race Blog
1.) Heat, as an environmental stressor, can effect the survival of humans by disturbing homeostasis. Human beings are known to be able to adapt to environmental pressures such as extreme heat and extreme cold. Changes in heat that are extreme can cause humans to do multiple things: brain malfunctions, passing out, skin hives, dehydration, and weakness. These malfunctions can cause individuals to have permanent damage mentally and can cause injury from fainting at random moments. Death by dehydration is a possibility making survival very difficult without access to fluids. Extreme changes in heat causes all of these disturbances in homeostasis making survival difficult within specific conditions.
2.) A short term adaptation to changes in Heat would be sweating or perspiration. This can cause dehydration but will cool down the body enough to maintain homeostasis and give a person enough time to find fluids and shade. This short term adaptation is beneficial because it not only cools off the person, but it can alert the person to the changes in heat that require them to find shelter.
A facultative adaptation to heat stress is vasodilation. Vasodilation is when there is a massive amount of blood rushing to the surface of the skin. The skin becomes extremely red due to the blood being closer to the surface. Since this is a facultative response, it won't be over as quickly as sweating would. It is still not very long and will eventually return back to normal blood flow to the skin.
A developmental adaptation to heat stress would be the size of someone's body due to the environmental stress. Those who live in warm or hot climate areas tend to be skinnier and more active. People who live near the equator have smaller body types and have darker skin in order to keep from maintaining massive amounts of heat.
A cultural adaptation to heat stress is the type of clothing being worn. People in California, on a very hot day, will wear tank tops and shorts in order to keep from being extremely hot throughout the day. This wouldn't protect from UV Rays but would indeed help keep a person from experiencing extreme amounts of heat. You can see changes in outerwear due to cultural beliefs. In Mexico (I am Mexican) we wear large hats to shade us from the heat when working out on the ranch. This is a cultural adaptation because many Mexicans do the same. Other cultures do this as well, but they wear other things.
3.) By studying human variation from this perspective across environmental clines we can see why humans are all different. Each person is different but entire races of individuals can be seen as different due to the environmental stresses of the area they are in. If we know why people look or act the way they do, we tend to not be so judgmental. This can be used in a beneficial way by teaches us the environmental stresses others are under around the world. With this information, people in places of high power can be more sympathetic and send more help to others who have to deal with harsh environmental stressors. We can also see how we are all humans just trying to adapt to environmental stresses and can cause us to be less racist and less rude as a human species in general. I believe we are all humans regardless of race, culture, or physical appearance and by knowing what someone else goes through we can start becoming a more loving and caring society.
4.) I would use race to understand the variation of adaptations in humans only to see the geographic locations of specific races and why people are different in how they adapt to environmental pressures. The study of environmental influences on adaptations is a better way to understand human variation because it doesn't allow humans the chance to segregate specific races due to different adaptations like studying by race would. If you study based off of the pressures others go through, in a person's mind they can see that everyone is different due to the geographic location and that we are all just humans trying to adapt to environmental stresses instead of the mindset that the person is only different due to their race.
2.) A short term adaptation to changes in Heat would be sweating or perspiration. This can cause dehydration but will cool down the body enough to maintain homeostasis and give a person enough time to find fluids and shade. This short term adaptation is beneficial because it not only cools off the person, but it can alert the person to the changes in heat that require them to find shelter.
A facultative adaptation to heat stress is vasodilation. Vasodilation is when there is a massive amount of blood rushing to the surface of the skin. The skin becomes extremely red due to the blood being closer to the surface. Since this is a facultative response, it won't be over as quickly as sweating would. It is still not very long and will eventually return back to normal blood flow to the skin.
A developmental adaptation to heat stress would be the size of someone's body due to the environmental stress. Those who live in warm or hot climate areas tend to be skinnier and more active. People who live near the equator have smaller body types and have darker skin in order to keep from maintaining massive amounts of heat.A cultural adaptation to heat stress is the type of clothing being worn. People in California, on a very hot day, will wear tank tops and shorts in order to keep from being extremely hot throughout the day. This wouldn't protect from UV Rays but would indeed help keep a person from experiencing extreme amounts of heat. You can see changes in outerwear due to cultural beliefs. In Mexico (I am Mexican) we wear large hats to shade us from the heat when working out on the ranch. This is a cultural adaptation because many Mexicans do the same. Other cultures do this as well, but they wear other things.
3.) By studying human variation from this perspective across environmental clines we can see why humans are all different. Each person is different but entire races of individuals can be seen as different due to the environmental stresses of the area they are in. If we know why people look or act the way they do, we tend to not be so judgmental. This can be used in a beneficial way by teaches us the environmental stresses others are under around the world. With this information, people in places of high power can be more sympathetic and send more help to others who have to deal with harsh environmental stressors. We can also see how we are all humans just trying to adapt to environmental stresses and can cause us to be less racist and less rude as a human species in general. I believe we are all humans regardless of race, culture, or physical appearance and by knowing what someone else goes through we can start becoming a more loving and caring society.
4.) I would use race to understand the variation of adaptations in humans only to see the geographic locations of specific races and why people are different in how they adapt to environmental pressures. The study of environmental influences on adaptations is a better way to understand human variation because it doesn't allow humans the chance to segregate specific races due to different adaptations like studying by race would. If you study based off of the pressures others go through, in a person's mind they can see that everyone is different due to the geographic location and that we are all just humans trying to adapt to environmental stresses instead of the mindset that the person is only different due to their race.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteYour post format was perfect and it was easy for me to identify all the major points. You described all your adaptations clearly and throughly. I also think that your idea of how you could potentially use race to help study is unique.
Hi, I really got a lot of information from reading your post and I clearly understood everything. The part I liked the best was how you would have a term and then you would explain what it is or what it meant. This made it a lot easier for me to understand what you were explaining in your post. I also liked how you incorporated your photos it fit the layout of your post and made it very easy for me to read the information and see it visually.
ReplyDeleteOkay with your opening section, but are all of the problems you list a direct result of heat stress itself? Or an indirect result? For example, you focus quite a bit on dehydration, but heat itself does not cause dehydration. When exposed to heat stress, the body tries to adapt to that heat and one way to do this is through sweating. THAT is what causes dehydration, not heat stress itself but the body trying to adapt to heat stress.
ReplyDeleteSo step back and think about what happens to the human body when it is exposed to heat stress. What happens to the body when the core body temperature drops below the optimum temperature of 98.6 degrees? Why can't it function well below this temperature?
Good description (and images) for your short term and facultative adaptations.
In general, good identification of your developmental adaptation, but recognize that "activity level" has nothing to do with this. And how does this adaptation work? How does a longer, leaner body shape help a person deal with heat stress? You talk about this in cold environments but not hot.
Good cultural adaptation.
I agree that knowledge is always useful, and that it would certainly benefit society if we can irradicate the concept, and the harmful implications, of race. But can you identify a way this knowledge can be useful in a concrete way? Can knowledge on adaptations to hot climates have medical implications? Help us develop clothing that releases heat more efficiently? Can we develop new means of home/building construction that might help decrease heat retention? How can we actually use this information in an applied fashion?
"I would use race to understand the variation of adaptations in humans only to see the geographic locations of specific races and why people are different in how they adapt to environmental pressures. "
But you are still using "environmental pressures"... so are you actually using race? Or just using the adaptive approach and layering race over top of it? Can you really use race to understand human variation? Recognize that it is entirely possible to answer this question with a "no".
To answer this question, you first need to explore what race actually is. Race is not based in biology but is a social construct, based in beliefs and preconceptions, and used only to categorize humans into groups based upon external physical features, much like organizing a box of crayons by color. Race does not *cause* adaptations like environmental stress do, and without that causal relationship, you can't use race to explain adaptations. Race has no explanatory value over human variation.
Hi! Really good post! For the cultural adaptation, do you think a tank top and shorts would help with heat more or less than the full-coverage clothing that is worn in very hot climates in places like Saudi Arabia? I'm curious to know if it's just as effective or if it makes it a little hotter, and its only use is to protect from UV rays? And I agree with you on number 3. If it is common knowledge on Why people are so different, it wouldn't be so needlessly tense or racially charged.
ReplyDeleteVery described post. I enjoyed reading about heat adaptation. It seems like you know the topic of heat well. I can see why people would want to have the least amount of clothes to get rid of body heat. Heat from the sun I would describe as UV radiation. So the fact that you stayed on the topic of heat and not jump to uv radiation is awesome. I wonder why in other cultures you have clothes on when its hot. I think some of the reason is because they want to protect themself with sun burn which would lead the class to uv radiation.
ReplyDelete