Higher Living and Learning

1.    Adjustment to high altitude is one of the adaptations that humans have overcome in recent millennia. The higher the altitude, the less air pressure there is, the less oxygen there is in the air for our lungs. This lack of oxygen disturbs our  homeostasis.

 

Humans have adapted to high altitudes many different ways: 

High altitude populations may have 10 oxygen-processing genes not normally found in sea level populations. 

Increased heart rates to process more oxygen.

An increase in lung size (people living in high areas of Peru can produce more hemoglobin in their blood to increase their lung expansion capability) to process more oxygen.

Producing more red blood cell to carry more oxygen through the body.

There are many benefits to studying human adaptation to different stresses such as altitude. By knowing how humans react and adapt to different altitudes we learn more of the limits of our species and we learn more regarding the inner workings of our respiratory and cardiovascular systems. By learning about altitude we learn of rates of and effects of acclimatization. Knowing the effects of acclimatization has proven helpful in many ways, one such way is with athletes. Some athletes now use acclimatization at high altitudes to train. These athletes believe that training at high altitude and acclimatizing to the high altitude will assist them by increasing their cardiovascular potential when competing in events at lower altitudes. 

When humans adapt to altitude it has little effect on race therefore it would be better to use adaptations caused by environmental influences to understand human differences and variations instead of simply looking and judging by the color of ones skin.

Language Post

Part 1: Mum’s the Word

    There are times where it is easy to communicate without words, but these times are often few and far between. One example of a time where non-verbal communication is easy is during tactical military operations. Yet the main reason non-verbal communication is effective during this time is everyone has been trained to be fluent in the non-verbal language of hand signals that is used. I assumed that this symbolic language assignment would be similar to tactical military operations and it would be easy to convey my thoughts….. I was very wrong. I picked my wonderful wife as my partner for this assignment and gave no warning regarding the assignment. After about a minute of trying to use solely non-verbal communication with her as she spoke to me, she became concerned for me and thought that I might be choking. This forced me to break character for a few seconds and explain my lack of words before she attempted the Heimlich maneuver on me. After I notified her of the assignment I found it very difficult to express to her that I wanted to go out and get Chinese food for dinner.  After attempting to pretend that I was using chopsticks for a time and her not grasping the symbolism, I rubbed my belly and obtained a stir-fry wok cooking bowl from the kitchen. Thankfully this worked and she grasped the idea I was attempting to convey. Even a idea as simple as I’m hungry becomes difficult without written or spoken language. If a culture, such as our own, met a culture that did not have a written language most people would think that the culture without language is of lower intelligence. Yet in this situation with a spoken language culture meeting a non-spoken language culture the advantage in communication would go to the culture that can best convey ideas without words if the spoken language culture has an open mind. This is due to the non-spoken language culture being able to convey ideas through body language and physically showing the spoken language culture the idea they are trying to convey, such as when I showed my wife the wok. Examples of individuals that have trouble communicating with the spoken language today are children with severe autism. It has been proven that children with autism who lack verbal communication skill are still having thoughts and ideas similar to other children their age, but they have great difficulty conveying these thoughts and ideas. Often the use of an intermediate form of communicating with a consistent texture is helpful, such as using the keyboard of an iPad.

Part 2: Look Ma’ No Hands!

    I found it quite difficult to not use my hands to speak and not use any non-verbal cues. Honestly, I felt as though I was acting like a robot for the full fifteen minutes (yet I know during the project I started using a few non-verbal cues and had to stop myself). Conveying ideas was easy without the use of non-verbal cues, but conveying the importance of the ideas proved to be much more difficult and it became difficult for my partner in this project to grasp the levels of importance I was attempting to convey regarding certain subjects. This project proved to me that the use of signs in our language is very important. Cues such as inflection and body language bear heavily on our daily communication. The ability to read a persons body language is somewhat universal, yet persons with autism lack the ability to read body language. This also makes it difficult for autistic children to know when a person is mad or unhappy. Not being able to read body language is a serious drawback due to many parts of human communication being more than just the words that they are saying. An environment where it could be beneficial to not read body language is in a situation where you are meeting a new culture, this is due to some body language being universal and yet some aspects of body language being learned. In this situation the body language that the other culture is presenting may not mean the same thing in your culture.

Eoanthropus Dawsoni

In the early 20^th Century archaeologists were desperate to locate the “missing link” between humans and apes. At this time there were multiple theories on how human evolved to their present state. Some archaeologists believed that early man developed a large brain and started to walk upright and become bipedal after the expansion of the brain. Another theory stated that humans started to walk more upright and became bipedal and then the expansion of human brains occurred. This pursuit of knowledge regarding the theories of mans origins led to one of the greatest scientific hoaxes of all time, the Piltdown Man.

                In the year 1908 an amateur paleontologist by the name of Charles Dawson began to excavate a gravel pit in the British town of Piltdown. Dawson came upon this site after he was presented with curious bone fragments that were found by workers at the gravel pit. After some time working on the site, Dawson enlisted the help of Arthur Smith Woodward who was the keeper of the Department of Geology at the British Museum at the time. The two continued to excavate the site until in 1912 when they located jaw and skull fragments that they thought could be the link between man and ape. The bone fragments seemed to show a very human fragments and with an ape like jaw in close proximity to each other inside the gravel pit. Woodward used the bone fragments to reconstruct a full skull which he thought to be of an early human who had lived approximately 500,000 years ago. The skull constructed by Woodard backed up the theory that human brains enlarged before becoming bipedal, this theory was supported by a Scottish anthropologist by the mane of Arthur Keith.

                Some scientists of the day said that the skull fragments didn’t belong together, that they were too different to be a part of the same being. Others were simply excited to finally have a fossil of early man be found in Britain. Yet, eventually, the fossils found by Dawson were later discovered to be a fraudulent.

                For three decades the skull was generally believed to be real. Yet in 1953 advanced methods of fluorine based dating of fossils were used on Dawson’s Piltdown Man fragments. The fluorine based dating showed that the fragments were only 50,000 years old and that Piltdown Man had never existed. Dawson’s find had fooled the world for such a long period of time partly due to potassium dichromate being applied to the fossils to make them appear much older than they actually were. Dawson’s find had effectively delayed proper theories of human evolution for decades.

                Today it is believed that Dawson may have known that the fragments were fraudulent the whole time and merely wanted recognition. This brings in the human element of science. “To err is human” but this was more than a simple “err”. We now know that Martin Hinton possessed the chemicals necessary to apply potassium dichromate to the fragments. Perhaps Dawson asked Hinton to coat the fragments of Piltdown man to complete his hoax. Errors like this can never be completely taken out of science. People have in the past attempted similarly appalling hoaxes, yet scientific review eventually proved them wrong. Incidents like Piltdown Man tarnish the name of science, but eventually the truth is always found by inquisitive minds that use real science to locate the flaws in the pseudo-science that was used before them.

                A life lesson we can take away from the incident of Piltdown Man is don’t skip steps in science. By following the scientific method and leaving as many scientific findings open and available for peer review, incidents like Piltdown Man may not occur again.

The Real Paleo Diet....of Primates

Lemurs are found in Madagascar and have been the sole primates in Madagascar for approximately 65 million years. During this time lemurs have come to occupy all areas of Madagascar. From the Rain forest to the wetlands, and form the grasslands to the forest, lemurs have adapted well to all environments of Madagascar. The diet of the lemur is highly variable; they are known to eat fruit, insects, plants and will sometimes eat small animals. Lemurs have adapted to their environment by developing a complex social structure, very good night vision, and a low metabolic rate. The low metabolic rate assists the lemurs in surviving when food is scarce during dry seasons.

Spider monkeys are found in tropical areas of South America, and require a large area to roam. Spider monkeys are omnivores that have a social structure in which they often pick a female as their leader when foraging for food, primarily fruit. Spider monkeys have adapted to their environment by having a mouth that can open wide enough to swallow most fruits whole. By swallowing the fruits whole, the spider monkeys food foraging time is reduced.

 

Baboons are found primarily in the savannas and semi-arid areas of Central Africa. There is not always an abundance of food in these areas; baboons are omnivores who can opportunistically eat whatever comes their way. Baboons separate and forage for food that may include fruit, grass, seeds, bark, roots, and sometimes even small animals such as rodents and birds during the day. After a long day of finding food, baboons gather into groups at night. Baboons have adapted to their environment by being able to eat and digest a diverse amount of potential food, but they are also selective and prefer to eat items that are higher in protein and fats.

                Gibbons are found in the dense forest s and jungles of India and Indonesia. Gibbons are also omnivores who mainly eat fruit, eggs, and insects. Gibbons have adapted to their environment through their long arms and light bodies which make it easier to climb trees to find food. Gibbons also live in groups which have a complex social structure with an alpha male and female.

 

Chimpanzees are found in the tropical forests and woody savannas of western and Central Africa. They are omnivores who will eat fruit, seeds, insects and sometimes small animals. Chimpanzees have adapted to their environment through their complex social structure and their highly dexterous hands. Chimpanzees are able to and often do use and make tools to assist them in gathering food. A good example of this is that they will often crush the shells of nuts with stones to access the food inside.

                All of these categories of primates are omnivores with complex social structures. Some are specifically adapted to their environment, while others need only rely on their social structure to survive and thrive. It is my opinion that it is their ability to eat and digest a wide variety of potential foods that allows them to adapt to changes in their environment and the occasional shortage of available food. Also, all of these categories possess a complex social structure that allows them to work together to find food.

Analogous vs Homologous Traits

Good examples of two species that appear very different on the surface, but are very homologous in regards to certain traits are humans and dolphins. The dolphin has a forelimb that is known as a flipper, this flipper contains a bone structure that is very similar to that of a human forelimb, an arm. Both species possess a five digits forelimb. Of course you know that you have five (phalanges) fingers, but a dolphin also has five finger like phalanges inside of its flipper. This similarity is derived from a common ancestor millions of years ago. Through the evolutionary process our five phalange structure has allowed us to very good at grasping and handling objects, while the five phalange structure of a dolphin’s flipper is nearly perfectly adapted to assist with movement in the water. To find a common ancestor for humans and dolphins you would have to go back to around the time that the dimetrodon roamed the earth. The dimetrodon also possessed a five phalanges structure in its forelimbs.

Homologous species have very similar traits, while analogous species have very different traits. Great examples of analogous traits are those of a dolphin and a shark. While one may assume that dolphins and sharks are very similar due to both being aquatic species, they are worlds apart genetically. From the outside a shark’s forelimb (pectoral fin) and dolphin’s flipper appear to be very similar, but under the surface the shark does not possess the five phalange structure of the dolphin’s flipper. The pectoral fin of the shark does not have any phalanges inside of it. The pectoral fin of the shark is comprised not of bone like the dolphin, a mammal. The shark is a fish, which has a forelimb comprised of cartilage that bears little resemblance to the dolphin’s flipper. As of yet we have not found a common ancestor between sharks and dolphins. We can assume that dolphins diverged from sharks long before the first mammals roamed the earth so it is not known if any common ancestor possessed this analogous trait.