Human Variation and Race

The environmental stress I chose is cold climate. By disturbing homeostasis, this environmental stress negatively impacts the survival of humans. It does this by making it uncomfortable for people, and causing harm to their health. Shivering is the first method of trying to maintain homeostasis, but also is uncomfortable. The cooling of body parts can result in cold injuries, including nonfreezing injuries, freezing injuries, and even hypothermia. Vasoconstriction, the narrowing of blood vessels, also occurs which is your body’s natural response to keeping your body warm, but can also cause harm if permanent.

Short Term Adaptation

A short term adaptation that humans use in response to a cold climate is shivering. When your body temperature starts to drop, your body starts to shake uncontrollably to warm it back up. The muscles have spasms which help to generate heat for a short period of time.

Facultative Adaptation

A facultative adaptation that humans use in response to a cold climate is vasoconstriction. Vasoconstriction is the narrowing of blood vessels in the human body. When blood vessels constrict, the flow of blood is restricted, thus retaining body heat.

Developmental Adaptation

A developmental adaptation that humans use in response to a cold climate is body shape and size. Populations that live in cold climates have a tendency to be more round and stout which helps them to keep in their body heat. When more fat is distributed around their mid section, it keeps the vital organs warmer and fat is used as energy to do that.

Cultural Adaptation

A cultural adaptation that humans use in response to a cold climate is clothing. Populations that live in cold climates wear heavy, insulated jackets, pants, hats, scarves, and gloves to keep warm. This is one of the most important and most effective tools in keeping warm.

There are many benefits to studying human variation from this perspective. For example, knowing how different people adapt to cold climates helps us to understand more about them. We can learn how they adapt physically but we can also learn how they adapt emotionally and this is very important. Some people adapt to cold climates better than others, but that is due to evolving in a way to live and survive in that climate. If everyone lived in a cold climate, everyone would be able to adapt to that environment over time. Information from explorations like these can be very useful to us. For example, knowing how vasoconstriction works to keep our body warm will help scientists and those specialized in making clothing designed specifically for cold climates, make clothing that works as efficiently as vasoconstriction does in our bodies when we are cold.

From the adaptations I listed above, you can learn so much about race. Race is defined as, “a local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics”. When a group of people have to adapt to their surroundings physically so they can better survive, they become a race. However, it is better to study environmental influences to understand human variation than by the use of race because the differences in the environment directly affect physical change and the way people live. Race is just the group of people that are affected. It is hard to judge human variation by looking at race alone.