1) Cold
Cold can easily effects humans homeostasis. Cold rapidly take the body temperature (heat) away. Cold temperature can severely effects blood circulation which it causes the low body temperature, in worst case, it causes necrosis. If the environmental stress continues, It needs a lot of energy to keep their body shaking to create heat.
2)
Short-term adaptation: When organisms are in this cold environmental stress, homeostasis makes orgasms to shake their body to create heat, and keep the body temperature stable.
facultative adaptation: Muscles and Blood vessel contract immediately when the temperature is low. This is to avoid unharnessing the body heat. Muscles contract to make areas of body surface to touch the cold smaller.
Developmental adaptation: Organisms' body store more fat to keep the body temperature in the cold environment. In cold temperature, organisms' muscles shakes itself to create more heat which means it is burning energy to create heat. However, when the the stress becomes long-term, it changes DNA to more fit the new environment. To keep body temperature without creating heat by burning energy, bogy starts store more fat to keep the heat inside of the body.
Cultural adaptation: There are many ways to protect themselves from cold environment. Humans more wear clothes to keep themselves warm, and eat hot food to help keeping their body temperature higher. Making fire, using heater is also cultural adaptation to cold environment.
3)Human variation provides beneficial information to adjust their environment. Which gives us opportunities to understand ways to survive in different climate. It is impossible to have same abilities to another human's abilities which developed by long period of time, however, their ability to adjust their environment gives another inspiration and tips to survive in the environment.
4) The study of environmental influences on adaptations is better to understand human valuation than by the use of race because human variation by environmental influence is certain and cannot occur in different environment. On the other hand, race is a group of people who gathered and evolved together in the same environment, they share same abilities and features biologically and culturally, but it does not mean that they are the only people who can survive in the environment, and also they have possibilities to evolve differently in different environment.
I find your post incredibly similar to mine. I also chose cold and found the same answers as you. I agree with your last part about the difference between studying environment vs race and the indisputable benefits of focusing on environment. I also concluded the same as you in regards to why studying this is beneficial. There is certainly a need to understanding how our body reacts in different environments and how to combat this.
ReplyDeleteGood opening explanation on cold stress and you did a good job describing the four types of adaptations to cold. With regard to vasoconstrition, is this an adaptation that can continue indefinitely or is there a danger to it over extended periods of time? If so, how does the body address this?
ReplyDeleteGood discussion in section #3.
I'm not clear as to what you mean by the first sentence in your last section by the "environmental influence being certain". This is a little deterministic to me, but I think you mean that you would develop traits adaptive for heat stress in a cold climate? The concept of certainty is a valuable one, primarily because the definition of race is NOT certain. It is highly variable and dependent upon who is defining the categories. This can be altered and influenced by bias and personal experiences and does not serve as a good basis for an objective study of human variation.