Human Variation & Race Blog

As we all know, 98.6 is the “normal” body temperature for human beings and is considered to be when our body is in homestasis, so for our body temperature to stray too far above or below can be detrimental to our health. There are a few reasons why as to why our bodies can change temperatures but one specific one can easily be the temperature of the atmosphere around you. Cold weather is an environmental stress that can negatively impacts the survival of humans by disturbing homeostasis. This is because in very cold climates, there is a danger of developing hypothermia (a life threatening drop in core body temperature to subnormal levels) that can result in death if body temperature reaches below 94 degrees for too long without being revived.

Short-term adaptation: “Shivering can cause a short-term warming effect. The increased muscle activity in shivering results in some heat production.”

Facultative adaptation: “A normal initial physiological response is the narrowing of blood vessels near skin surface (vasoconstriction).  This preserves core body heat by reducing peripheral blood flow but prolonged vasoconstriction can result in dangerous frostbite. As a consequence, the body's internal temperature regulating mechanism responds by dilating the peripheral blood vessels (vasodilation), thereby increasing the flow of warm blood near the skin surface.” Three other things that can contribute as the body response mechanisms are increased basal metabolic rate fat insulation of vital organs and long term change in blood flow patterns.

Developmental adaptations: “The American biologist Joel Allen noted that among warm-blooded animals, individuals in populations of the same species living in warm climates near the equator tend to have longer limbs than do populations living further away from the equator in colder environments. In such extremely cold environments, a stocky body with short appendages would be more efficient at maintaining body heat because it would have relatively less surface area compared to body mass.”

Cultural adaptations: “Our clothing and technologies that allow us to keep buildings warm in the winter and cool in the summer tend to offset the effects of natural selection now in shaping our bodies. Many people living in freezing climates drink alcohol to warm themselves but A much more effective cultural response to extremely cold temperatures is the use of insulating clothing, houses, and fires..People all over the world also adapt by limiting outdoor activities to warmer times of the day.  In some societies, sleeping in family groups with bodies pushed up against each other is also done in order to minimize heat loss during the cold months of the year. They traditionally consume large quantities of high calorie fatty foods This significantly increases the basal metabolic rate, which, in turn, results in the production of extra body heat.”

The benefits of studying human variation in this way is very beneficial because it shows us that the differences between people are usually not because of race and the things that set us apart are the environments that we live in and the way the our generations adapt to the places we live. Studying the environmental variances is much more effective than studying race because race is only something that society has made an idea of, in the eyes of science there is no such thing as race. We can more accurately tell the differences between people because of their environments than because of what we accumulate as the traits within a “race” which are usually invalid and spread across many variations of people.

I don’t feel that race is a good way to make sense of any biological or even physical differences because race is not something that is a valid source of reasoning, you cannot separate people within races based on traits because similar traits are seen throughout all variances of people. Looking at the person’s environment can explain much better the idea of natural selection and why certain traits are exhibited  in some generations and race cannot give any explanations.

Language Blog Post

“Engaging in a conversation for 15 minutes where I was not allowed to use any version of a symbolic language” and then another “15 minutes communicating without any physical embellishments” was a lot harder than I anticipated. I have played charades in the past but for some reason it was nothing like that. I thought that this would have been a fun kind of game like experience with my family, just like charades, but it ended up being to total opposite.

 I did this experiment with my sisters, brother, and fiancé and tell all had the same reaction. They all got frustrated with me. I was actually quite surprised at their reactions. I did try to make it seem more like a conversation than a game and I think that is what threw them off. I don’t know American Sign Language so I am not sure if some of my symbols might have been ASL, but even if it was my family wouldn’t have known. I must have been really horrible because they could not grasp anything I was attempting to portray. And even though I told them they could speak back to me, and they knew I wasn’t actually illiterate, they way in which they responded when they understood what I meant, was much more symbolic than normal. They enunciated their words more, they used more hand signals and facial expressions and their voice was heightened almost like because I couldn’t speak English I was def. It was quite fascinating.

In the strangest of ways, it almost did feel like my siblings and I were from two different worlds, meeting for the first time trying to interact with one another and in the way that they interacted with me, I could tell that they felt some type of superiority as in if this were a real situation they would feel more intelligent and have to speak to the person in a way where they feel like they were dumbing down their communication skills., it was all in their tone of the way they spoke to me. In my own opinion I definitely think that getting an extremely complex thought or idea across would be much easier to do in the culture that has developed language not just symbols because you can articulate your point in a more precise fashion. Although in almost every culture, no matter what the language is, you can communicate in some form or fashion with symbols and hand gestures. There are many people in our culture who have difficulty communicating with spoken language, such as babies, people who are def, people who cannot physically speak, people who speak different languages, people who posses mental retardation issues and maybe just people who are not well educated. People who can efficiently communicate through spoken language do often try and take on a different approach in the way they communicate with someone who has difficulty or who cannot at all communicate with spoken language. They try to use more hand gestures and symbols which is where Sign Language took on a whirlwind. 

In the second part of the experiment when we had to talk without any hand signals, vocal intonation, head, facial, or body movements, I did not last very long and I kept messing up and starting over again but after a while I just gave up. I actually thought it wouldn’t be so hard because I have had  many teachers in my past who has just sat there and addressed the class in what felt like was a rambling speech with the most monotone voice and no enthusiasm. I thought if they can do it so can I. I was wrong. I am a very vibrant, enthusiastic type of person, and I had never realized until this experiment, that I talk with my hands as the expression goes. At probably about the third time I had to end up sitting on my hands, to not move them. It is almost like all of those physical embellishments are what help people communicate their points more effectively, or at least that what it felt like to me.

My family looked as if they wanted to fall asleep by the 15^th word, but since I continued to mess up, it kept them laughing. I figure that was the only reason why they didn’t fall asleep. I purposely threw in some inappropriate words just to see if they would notice and it’s almost like they zoned out of the conversation, they couldn’t even tell me what I was talking about in the end. I think this just shows how signs in our spoken language are just as important as spoken language itself. Yes we can communicate without signs, but seeing as human’s attention spans nowadays are extremely short, we have to use the physical embellishments to keep people paying attention so that they can remember and care about what you just said when you’re done saying it. If there are people out there who cannot read body language, it is because in my opinion, the common sense part in their life’s development is missing, the interactions with other human beings aren’t happening. There is a huge advantage to being able to read body language, because after a while if you’re good at it, you can almost know what someone wants to say or doesn’t want to say or even can’t say without them saying a word. I don’t think there could ever be environmental conditions where not being able to read body language could be beneficial. The only situation I could maybe think of would be if someone was being interrogated for committing a crime, and if they were lying and the detective couldn’t read body language, that would then be good for the criminal.

Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown hoax was a scientific finding of an “Early Primate Fossil” that was thought to be the finding of the primates fossil that could be the ancestor of, or the earliest findings of the human species. England was last in the science of Paleontology in the fact of that there had never been a fossil finding of humans prior to this incident in England. The only thing is that the entirety of the information published about the finding was completely falsified by the founders, or the understanding is that the finders might have been “dooped” or otherwise fooled with and the findings may have been planted there or tampered with.  This whole forgery started in 1912 near the southern English town of Luesse in a little village named Piltdown at one particular gravel pit, and involved an amateur Archeologist named Charles Dawson , England’s leading Geologist of the Natural History Museum Arthur Smith Woodward, and  a French Paleontologist Father Pierre. These findings of supposed early human fossils began to be questioned by other scientist and the community, and although very few people ever even got to see the actual fossil findings, the three men made their claim so stern and certain that no one wanted to further question their abilities to correctly interpret their findings. These findings went on to affect the scientific community for the next 40 years from other scientist trying to make better sense of the findings and also trying to discover more of the fossil findings of similar specimens. After the exceeding time that the men’s finding were kept under lock and key, scientist finally got their hands on the fossils and began to study them closer and discovered that the findings information was falsified and that the fossils were much younger than the three men had claimed them to be (which was around 3 million years old), even as young as 100 years old. This was all discovered when better technologies had evolved and was helping paleontologist better date the bones/fossils. Scientist were appalled, and did not understand why the men would fake their findings.

            Some of the human faults that came into play in this scenario is the idea of conformity and the need to be a part of society, this is was affected the public and the men’s fellow scientist peers. All three of the men were of a prestigious class and society so no one questioned them or further criticized their findings because they didn’t want to be the specific one who question the findings and set the paleontology community back and the entire Country of England back. Another human fault is the sin of greed and envy on the part of the lying scientist or persons, the idea is that the men created this falsified finding because either they were so jealous of other countries and their findings, and they wanted to be able to say that England does posses fossils of early humans. Another idea is that the scientist wanted to have a higher prestige and respect amongst their colleagues so they forged the info.

            Some of the scientific processes that were responsible for revealing the skull to be a fraud was first that there were scientist that discovered fossil findings of early humans that were supposed to be younger than the Piltdown findings but they looked less human that the Piltdown findings not more human which is what raised the first questions and also the fact that no one could find any more of these findings after Charles Darwin’s death in 1916. In 1949 scientist conducted a fluorine test on the Piltdown fossils and in 1953 they conducted a full scale analysis with newer technologies and discovered that the staining on the bones were superficial, the staining on the artifacts was fake and the carvings were made when the bones were already fossilized and most likely carved with a steal knife and when the scientist looked at the fossil under the microscope they discovered that the teeth were carved down to look like human teeth instead of the orangutan teeth that they were. Bones were broken and put back together forcefully to make it look like they were some form of human bones.

            It is not really possible to eliminate the human factor out of science and I am not sure if I would want to. Science usually is a product of a passionate person who is looking for answers that have not been found yet. Yes many scientist still use technology but it is the actual scientist who does the countless hours, days and years and studying that makes these findings public. Without that human factor to science, it would no longer be science.

            This hoax like many others teaches a huge lesson about analyzing things just from a surface view without researching the facts and the history. It is better to be the one who questions everything than the one who falls for anything. This is why we have scientist around. We need them help us get the facts and history of certain things.

Comparative Dentition Patterns of Primate

Seeing as before hand, I did not know what "Dentition Patterns" meant, I felt the need to define the term for those who may need it.

den·ti·tion

[den-tish-uhn] Show IPA

noun

1.

the makeup of a set of teeth including their kind, number, and arrangement.

2.

the eruption or cutting of the teeth; teething; odontiasis.

 

Chimpanzees:

Chimp’s habitat span 21 African countries from the west coast of the continent east through the vast central-African nation of Congo (formerly Zaire) to the western reaches of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania. The natural habitat of chimpanzees includes both tropical forests and Chimps on the western border of the species’ range can even be found living on the bordering savannas in Africa. However, savanna-dwelling chimps do not seem to stray far from the forest edges.  Chimpanzees live in social communities of several dozen animals, without monogamous mating bonds. Chimpanzees usually sleep in the trees employing nests of leaves. Chimps are generally fruit and plant eaters, but they also consume insects, eggs, and meat, including carrion. Chimps do most of their eating in the trees. The eating patterns of the chimps that live off of more herbs are the ones that don’t have to eat meats, they are the ones that live and maintain mostly in the trees. Though for the chimps with the sharper teeth, those are the ones that have to substitute some of the herbivore ways to eat meat because it may be more available, these are the chimps that live in the savannahs.

 

 

Gibbons:

These acrobatic primates live in southeast Asia. Gibbons are arboreal; they spend most of their lives in trees and use their arms to move from branch to branch. They feed chiefly on leaves, fruit, insects, and small birds. These animals are built much smaller and have much smaller teeth than their sister species, this is due to the fact that they spend most of their time in the trees only so the only meat that they have to endure is maybe so birds which accounts for the four longer sharper teeth (canine teeth)

  

 

Baboons:

All Baboons either live in Africa or Arabia, they  generally prefer savanna and other semi-arid habitats, though a few live in tropical forests and they spend much of their time on the ground. Baboons are opportunistic eaters and, fond of crops of farmers if there are some around .They eat fruits, grasses, seeds, bark, and roots.  They also can be known to eat meat like birds, rodents, and even the young of larger mammals, such as antelopes and sheep. The fact that Baboons spend most of their time on the ground obviously means that they encounter much more interactions from other animals, so for them to not be eaten, they must become the predators. This is why they have the most Carnivorous adapted teeth among all primates.

  

 

Spider Monkey:

Most Spider monkeys live in the tropical rain forests of Central and South America and occur as far north as Mexico. The most easiest habitat for them to live in is the trees of the rain forest.  These New World primates are social and gather in groups of up to two- or three-dozen animals. Spider monkeys find food in the treetops and feast on nuts, fruits, leaves, bird eggs, and spiders. Their dental patterns are much different sense they do not eat much meat, their canines are much smaller because they do not have to tear through anything but they are used to crack the nuts and eggshells of which they feed.

  

 

Lemurs:

Lemurs  are native to the island of Madagascar and the neighbouring Comoro Islands. Lemurs live in trees which is why they are also called arboreal. They spend most of their time at the top of the rainforest canopy. Most Lemurs live in the rainforests but some live in the desert areas that are very hot and dry. Lemurs both in the wild and in captivity eat fruits and vegetables. Some of their favorite fruits include apples, bananas, oranges, and melon such as cantaloupe. When it comes to vegetables the favorites will be carrots, yams, kale, chicory, red cabbage, sumac leaves, and chick peas. Lemurs are insectivorous and herbivorous creatures. Also, prosimian society is female-dominated. Lemurs dentition is a six-tooth version of the strepsirrhine toothcomb in a ring-tailed lemur, with canine-like premolars . The lemur dentition is heterodONT (having multiple tooth morphologies) and derives from an ancestral primate permanent dentition of 2.1.3.32.1.3.3. In the toothcomb of most lemurs, the bottom incisors and canine teeth are procumbent (face forward rather than up) and finely spaced, thus providing a tool for either grooming or feeding.
  

 

All the primates alike have incisors, canines, premolars and molars.