Surviving the Heat

   Heat is an environmental stress that negatively impacts the survival of humans by disturbing homeostasis. The human race is impacted by this environmental stress everyday. In some areas of the world the land is uninhabitable because the temperature reaches such high numbers that it is impossible for a human to populate the area. These areas include such regions as vast areas of the Sahara desert in Africa, the Australian outback, among other hot arid regions of the world. Heat can also negatively impact humankind by causing heat strokes, exhaustion, fevers, and dehydration. Also generally when its hot outside its because there is little to no shade in the area (also an effect of heat) and this can cause sunburns, hyperthermia, and heat rashes in humans. All of which have been known to cause hospitalization and in some cases death.

   As we have learned throughout this course, humans are highly adaptive creatures; so naturally we have developed adaptations to the stress of extreme heat. Adapting to hot environments is complex A short Term adaptation that we have developed to extreme heat is air conditioning. When you think of a hot day and you get in the car what’s the first thing you do? You crank on the AC as high as it will go and hope that the cold air kicks in fast. A facultative response to heat is skin color, some people have the ability to go out in the sun for extended periods of time and are not affected by the suns rays (typically people with darker skin) and then there are those people who (like me) go out in the sun for 15 minutes and get burnt to a crisp. An developmental adaptations that humans have developed over the span of our evolution is sweating, it’s our bodies way of cooling it self down. “In dry, hot weather, humidity is low and sweat evaporates readily.  As a result, we usually feel reasonably comfortable in deserts at temperatures that are unbearable in tropical rain forests.  The higher the desert temperatures, the more significant of a cooling effect we get from evaporation.” A cultural development is the creation of sports drinks to help replenish and replace lost mineral salts that are vital for humans in order for them to be able to “naturally” cool ourselves down. We’ve all seen it, professional athletes playing sports in hot weather conditions, as soon as they head to the sideline for a quick break they seem to always be chugging Gatorade or some other brand of “sports drink” to help them revitalize their worn down bodies.

   There are many benefits of studying human variation from this perspective across environmental clines. It can answer questions about why different races are better adapted to living in hotter parts of the world and scientists can create ways of aiding humans in adapting to extremely hot areas of the world. Also in the future when the population increases, scientists can create ways for humans to live in areas that today are virtually uninhabitable or even in the far future ways for humans to liv on other planets that are closer to the sun, thus the average temperature of the planet is much higher then here on earth. And information from explorations like this be useful to help us in many ways it helps us to understand why people with darker skin tend to live closer to the equator and people with lighter skin live the furthest north or south from the equator, its helps scientists better understand our evolution as humans and the reasons why certain races are better adapted to the heat.

   Race is merely a way to categorize people, but in this instance it’s very useful, like I said previously certain races are better adapted to living in hot areas where they are constantly exposed to the sun and high temperatures. Using race to understand the variations I listed above is a helpful way of learning about various adaptations of humankind and how to start developing ideas about the future of the human race.

Air Conditioning

Skin Color

Sports Drinks

Sweat