1.
The cold is not always just not fun to be in,
but it also can harm your body by taking it out of homeostasis. Some of the
ways it does this is by shivering or producing goosebumps. This is negative
because the body knows that outside is cold, and it knows that it needs to keep
it on the outside, so it creates little goosebumps. This is your body fighting
to bring it back to an average temperature and bring it back to homeostasis. Goosebumps
would be the result of a short-term adaption.
2.
The first is going to focus on a short-term adaption, and for this one I
would have to say goosebumps again. Goosebumps also occur when you are scared another
way for your body to bring you back to homeostasis.
Second
is, Facultative adaption. For this
one, it would be kind of like above how your body knows to turn on an internal
heater whenever it is cold outside. You do not have to make it change
temperatures, it just does it because that is how it adjusts.
The third is Developmental adaptions. An example of this is bipedalism. Bipedalism
is not a change you can see in a person but in people, in the relatives. I know
this one brings it back a bit farther to our primate days since it is not
something we do, as humans, anymore, obviously, and it is a bit harder to see. We
did not find it useful to walk on all fours or function the same way anymore
because we have adjusted to our surroundings.
Now we can run faster.
The last is cultural adaptions. I feel like this is
the most seen adaption. You can really see it work even through something as
small as fashion. Fashion is stressed constantly, even with just trying to fit
in. people will adapt and there are constantly new clothes going in and out of
style and it is our job to try to keep up on the social status.
3.
I feel like researching human variation by
looking at all of the adaptions in our society is way easier to understand it
and way more helpful. It really shows the evolution in things in the long-term
scheme of things and the short-term. It also shows more of the personal
inwardly changes, for example, to the climate.
4.
Race is defined as “Each of the major divisions
of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics”. I feel like race would
be shown in a developmental adaption kind of setting. You can see different
races and different kinds of people that may all come from one main culture and
race but years and years down the road you will see the difference and the
split that make up all of the many kinds of races we have today. But also, environmental
influence is what switches things up a little bit so that everything is not the
same. Everyone will react to their environment differently and will absorb
different things depending on the people that surround them, the nutrition, and
the way they are brought up is a big part too. There are a lot of other factors
that play into an environmental influence that will help show you a lot more
about the adaptions made.
"...it also can harm your body by taking it out of homeostasis. Some of the ways it does this is by shivering or producing goosebumps."
ReplyDeleteNo, goosebumps (and shivering) are positive responses by your body to cold stress. They don't harm your body, though they have very limited positive impact.
In your opening section, you really focus on the clues that tell you your body is cold, but you don't explain why cold stress is a problem for the human body. Why do our bodies need to maintain a core body temperature of 98.6 degrees? What happens to our body's organs and circulatory system below this temperature? Why is hypothermia a problem for us? These are the questions that needed to be explored here to help us understand why adaptations to cold stress are necessary in the first place.
Goosebumps *used* to be an adaptation but not anymore in humans. Goosebumps form when the tiny muscle attached to the base of the hair follicle contracts, causing the hair to stand upright. Now if the organism has a full coat of hair, this causes and air pocket of warm air to form between the skin and the hair to act as insulation. But without that heavy coat of fur, we gain no benefit. We are left with only the bumps. Shivering is an example of a still functioning short term adaptation to cold stress.
You don't actually identify the facultative adaptation to cold stress. You explain it a bit, but I don't know what it actually is. An example of a facultative adaptation to cold stress is vasoconstriction. This is described in the resources in the assignment module.
How does bipedalism help us adapt to cold stress? I've heard about the argument that bipedalism is an adaptation to heat stress, but not to cold. You needed to explain your point here. An example of a developmental adaptation to cold stress is a round, squat body shape that helps trap heat in the body core. This is explained as Bergmann and Allen's rules in the assignment module.
Clothes can indeed be an adaptation to cold stress but you aren't describing it here as a means to address cold stress. You describe it as a means of maintaining social status, but that's not the point of this assignment. It would have been appropriate here to explain how clothing can be used to help the human body retain heat in the body and maintain homeostasis with regard to body temperature.
I agree that knowledge is always useful, but can you identify a way this knowledge can be useful in a concrete way? Can knowledge on adaptations to cold climates have medical implications? Help us develop clothing that retains heat more efficiently? Can we develop new means of home/building construction that might help increase heat retention? How can we actually use this information in an applied fashion?
I see the point you are trying to make in the last section, but we need to ask if it is even possible to 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 does, and without that causal relationship, you can't use race to explain adaptations. Race has no explanatory value over human variation.