1.
Cold environments affect homeostasis when lower
air temperatures disrupt the normally stable core body temperatures of humans,
creating serious risk for hypothermia.
2.
In cold
areas for temporary relief people will drink alcohol. Alcohol dilates the blood
vessels of the body, this causes the warm blood from the core to move to the
limbs. The movement of warm blood causes a warm feeling. However this is
dangerous because it exposes more blood to cold temperatures increasing the
risk of hypothermia.
More effective cultural responses would be the use of
insulating clothing or warming fires. Often communal events including group
sleeping combines body heat at colder times of night.
A facultative
adaptation would be limiting outdoor activities to the warmest parts of the day
and warmest months.
People develop differently
too. Humans in colder climates tend to be shorter, larger, and possess shorter
limbs; exposing less surface area to the environments.
3.
Study variation across clines is advantageous
because you can see adaptations visually. You can track peoples movements be
seeing traits specific to environments. It
can help us understand how to cope with harsh environments, seeing how one
people can adjust to a specific stressor can give scientists a large window
into selection on genetic variation.
4.
Using race to explain a behavior or appearance
has developed by those who don’t possess the understanding of why. Take for
example the belief that all Russians drink vodka, or are alcoholics. That
generalization is because they are not looking for the root cause, which is
they are trying to keep warm. It can also lend one into a sense of
ethnocentrism. They see that a native family all sleeps in the same room at
night. This person might come to the conclusion that it’s better that in our
culture to get separate rooms. They are not realizing this is a cultural
adaptation for survival. Seeing races in most cases leads to prejudices.
Whereas looking at the why, or environmental adaptation, leads to a better understanding
of people.
The first section needs to be expanded for a more complete description of this stress. Draw some connections between the cold and how it impacts the body and the specific negative affects, not just the general affect.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your short term response: A couple of things to remember. Short term adaptations are physiological adaptations. Drinking alcohol is a cultural trait. That said, it is not even adaptive as a cultural trait for reasons you mention. Alcohol give the illusion of warmth, but it is a false warmth. It actually dehydrates your body and reduces your mental capacity to remove yourself from the dangerous situation of cold stress, making you less likely to survive. This is not adaptive, it is maladaptive.
An example of a short term adaptation is shivering, which increases the production of heat in the body.
Okay on your cultural adaptation.
Adjusting activity to warm parts of the day is a cultural trait, not facultative. An example of a facultative adaptation to cold stress is alternating vasoconstriction/vasodilation.
Good developmental trait.
Your discussion in section #3 is very good.
"Using race to explain a behavior or appearance has developed by those who don’t possess the understanding of why."
That is a great explanation! The benefit of the using the environmental/adaptive approach is that is explains why traits exist. It doesn't just categorizes, it explains. Now, I will again argue with your example (drinking alcohol), which is *not* adaptive, but your overall logic is sound.
It seems that many of us chose cold for some reason, but I have to say that your comment on using race was great. I had no idea how to answer that one. Although, I can see that using race might be a starting point and this one might be the easiest.
ReplyDelete