2. Short Term - Sweating is a short term adaptation that occurs shortly after exposure to high levels of heat. Heat is released from the body as sweat rises from the skin and evaporates. As heat leaves the body, body temperatures cool down to maintain a lower body temperature.
Facultative - Vasodilation is when blood flow increases toward the skins surface. This is tied to how people turn red in the sun. Your body is bringing its blood flow closer to the surface in order for heat to exit the body easier from the blood.
Developmental - Bipedalism was one way humans adapted to heat. By walking upright you are exposing less of your body to sunlight. That is a possible reason that the human body chose to keep hair on the top of our heads and on the top/front side of our arms, legs, and hands/feet even after the human body lost majority of its hair through evolution. Hair helps protect the skin from the harmful UV rays.
Cultural - Wearing clothes was a cultural decision humans made that helps regulate body temperature. Less clothing keeps you cooler and more clothing keeps you warmer.
3. Understanding why the body functions the way it does in certain scenarios like how it has adapted to heat can be very useful to human survival. For example, by understanding how sweating cools the body maybe we can develop some sort of drug to help catalyst the process and help the body function more effectively at a higher temperature for a longer time.We can use this drug with people working in high temperatures or as an emergency type drug that hikers can carry or soldiers etc.
4. You can not use race to study the variation of adaptations I have listed above. All races sweat, all races are bipedal, all races can endure vasodilation, and any person of any race can put on any piece of clothing and experience the same effects. Therefore it is better to study the human body as a whole to better understand how we have developed these adaptions to increase our chances of survival. You can maybe look at the type of clothing some cultures wear such the long robe and head pieces that are worn in the middle east to help block sun rays, but what i am trying to say is that any person of any race can wear that piece of clothing and experience the same effects.
Great response! I also chose to research heat stress. I enjoyed your opening statement as it really grabbed my attention, great response!
ReplyDeleteOverall, okay in your first section, but let's dig into your description a bit. The body loses water because it is already trying to adapt to heat due by sweating to keep the body temperature under control. So what you are actually describing is dehydration from sweating, not the problems associated with a rise in body temperature. So what happens, specifically, when the body temperature rises too high above that optimal temperature of 98.6? What happens to the body's organs, particularly the brain, above this level? Why is this condition dangerous?
ReplyDeleteGood short term adaptation.
Good facultative, but understand that the redness of our skin is just a symptom of this adaptation. It isn't part of it's functional response.
I appreciate that you drew the idea of bipedalism as an adaptation for your developmental response, but the first three types of adaptations are biological/genetic in nature. Bipedalism is a complex set of multiple traits and behaviors that produce this form of locomotion. Can you think of a straight physical trait (not behavioral) that is an adaptation to heat stress? How about body shape, as per Bergmann and Allen's rules? This is described in the resources in the assignment sub-module.
Okay on cultural, but you talk about wearing "less clothes" but the picture you chose shows a culture that actually went the other direction and deal with heat by being fully covered. Can you explain this?
Very good thinking in the next section.
I understand your point in the last section, but you may have arrived at this conclusion based upon the adaptations you chose. Yes, all humans sweat, but some are more efficient than others (notably those in hot climates are more efficient). All humans are bipedal, but not all are the same body shape. So not all humans have the same adaptation, and you can see this when you include the other three stresses in the assignment, particularly skin color as an adaptation to solar radiation stress. So by itself, this doesn't explain why we can't use race to understand human variation.
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.
Your explanation for the first question was easy to understand. When exposed to prolonged periods of extreme heat, your body goes through dehydration. This could become dangerous because it is disrupting the body's equilibrium. I liked your idea about using this information to produce something that can help in certain emergency situations. This data can provide scientists and doctors with the ability to learn how to avoid heat exhaustion or heat stress. Of course, keeping hydrated is what helps in these matters but it would be good to have access to a type of medicine for immediate relief, where access to water or other medical faculties for hydration are not easily available.
ReplyDeleteDiego, I find heat stress very fascinating and find it crazy how our body naturally cools us down using sweat. Your cultural example was quite blunt and also very true and I loved the image you used. However it completely contradicted your statement. You said "Less clothing keeps you cooler and more clothing keeps you warmer." yet these people are wearing quite a lot of clothes in a desert. I would of phrased it as, people in colder weather tend to wear heavier and more layers of clothes while people in hot regions tend to wear less clothes or clothes that cover their bodies but are light weight. Other than that, great job.
ReplyDeleteHello Diego,
ReplyDeleteI found your post very informative. I was a little confused about the differences between Short Term adaptation and Facultative adaptation when I made my own post. Your examples of these adaptations as they relate towards different environmental stress helped me to better understand them. Additionally, I thought that your point in question number two was very good. I as well believe that researching adaptations further can contribute greatly towards the future of medicine
Everything you wrote was very in depth and informative. For your 4th prompt answer I want to challenge however because to some extent I do agree with your answer, however there are certain things that race can be useful for variation of adaption. I know all races genetic make up are not much different but they do have differences in appearance that can be the source of variation. Like how certain peoples living in the cold have smaller noses so they take in smaller breaths or how they have fatty eyelids in order to keep their eyes warm.
ReplyDeleteVery well thought out and informative blog. Wish I had seen it before I did mine so I could have gotten an idea of how part two was suppose to be done and you helped me understand that portion so thank you.
ReplyDelete