I
picked the environmental stress of heat because it is so often talked about,
not so much with humans, but the earth itself. Heat negatively effects human homeostasis
by Hyperthermia, which is an overheating of the body that eventually causes the
deterioration of all internal organs, if it remains untreated. Heat can also
cause cramps, heat stroke, and heat exhaustion. Heat from the sun specifically
can also cause certain forms of skin cancer as well as sun burn.
One
example of short-term adaption to this specific stress would be sweating, which
cools down the body somewhat, when it becomes too hot.
An
example of a facultative adaption is the reddening of the skin when exposed to
heat for a long period of time. The reddening of the skin is all the blood coming
to the surface to help cool the person’s internal organs.
An
example of Developmental adaption in humans is the limb length, the height of
the person, and their weight. People adapted to a hot climate are usually tall
and lanky, with long limps to help disperse heat from their bodies.
Two
examples of cultural adaption to heat are diet and clothing style. Humans
generally choose to indulge in colder foods such as ice cream and popsicles
around this time of year. Most humans also began wearing shorter and thinner
clothing to help with their body’s cooling process.
The
benefits of studying human variation across environmental clines from this
perspective is learning how things happen to our bodies and why. We also learn
just how much our environment affects us and how we have evolved and adapted to
it through natural selection. Information from these explorations is helpful to
us in an educational way as well as a way to better survive. Examples of how
this information helps us is knowing how to protect yourself in certain
climates such as extremely hot or extremely cold.
I
would use race to understand this adaption because people in hotter
environments are normally have a very dark or black skin color, because it
better helps defend against the damage the sun can cause as well as helping
cool the person down. I believe that this variation helps explain why depending
on our different environments, why we are different colors and that inside we
are all the same. This study offers undeniable proof that just because we have
different skin colors and such does not mean we are too different to be equal.
