Variation and Adaptation

11)   Heat is an environmental stress that negatively affects homoeostasis because it causes hyperthermia within our bodies. Life threatening hyperthermia typically starts in humans when their temperatures rise to 105-107° F.  Only a few days at this high temperature level is likely to result in the deterioration of internal organs and death.

22)   A short-term adaptation for heat is sweating.  This allows our body to use our sweat to evaporate, cooling off the spot exposed to the sweat,

A facultative adaptation for heat is the urine volume decrease, the blood vessels dilating, and salt in sweat decreasing.  The urine volume decrease and the salt in sweat decrease help prevent dehydration.  The dilation allows access materials in our body to be let out.

A developmental adapting would be the body mass of someone to the smaller than that of someone from a cold area.  The body mass allows those in a hot area to radiate heat out of their body.

A culture adaptation is the type of clothes we wear daily in a hot area.  The ability to wear tank tops and shorts allow the heat within our bodies to be let out easier than if we were wearing thicker close.

33)   The benefits are that we better know how to adjust to a certain areas around the world when a season of the year is coming around.  A way that knowing how to adjust to heat is beneficial is that if someone wanted to go to a hot area, say near the equator of the world, that person would know not to wear thick clothing and to bring water to avoid dehydration from hyperthermia.

44)   Race can help understand the adaptation that I listed in number two by studying those near hot areas like Africa and tropical places.  By studying those in hot areas you can truly find out if sweating, dilatation of skin, body mass, and clothes really do affect the effects from the heat.

Environmental study is better than race study because a race could possess certain traits that an environmental study won’t show.  For example, darker skin people are migrating to place that are cold because they found a way to keep their bodies warm.  This proves that you don’t have to have lighter skin to live in a cold area.  Something that only a race study will show as an outcome.  Environmentally, taking an “x” amount of people and studying them in different places will show naturally how the body reacts in certain places.

Language is Important

Language:

Part 1:

1)   This experiment was not difficult for my partner or me because with how the world is today, in a classroom or in the work environment where you are told not to speak much, we adapted to reading each other’s body languages as well as learn to understand the facial language.  Making this experiment rather easy.

2)   Like I stated in the first answer, we both are so used to reading the facial expressions that we both understand what we are saying without words or sign language rather well.  If it were someone else though, I do think that more hand movements would be coming from him or her as a way to try and make me help them understand what they are saying.

3)   If we were of two different cultures, the culture with more verbal understanding would probably have the biggest advantage because it is easier to say something then to show something in most cases.  When I think of someone who can’t really communicate with a verbally able person I think of a special needs student and a “normal” student.  Because of some lack of verbal communication, we tend to talk softer in tone as well as use hand movements and facial expressions to help out our conversation.  I think that would be the attitude that is shown within two groups of different cultures as well, where the “higher” culture sort of looks down at the other culture in a soft kind of way.

Part 2:

1)   Because you did say that we needed to do the experiment for the whole 15 minutes, I would have to say that we struggled, but did last the 15 minutes.  Being that I did this experiment with my girlfriend, knowing how I would be communicating, it mad not only her, but me frustrated as well.  Being that we’re usually talking in a way that causes us to laugh or have “awe” moments, this made the experiment much more difficult than it needed to be.

2)   This affected my partner because unable to show any emotion as well as movement to confirm or not confirm something, this made her rather mad and irritated her.

3)   Non-speech language is very important to our language and it definitely makes a different when communicating with certain people.  It shows attitude more than any other emotion.  With no other way to communicate, there is no emotion, so even if you were to say something like “I miss you”, without the emotion, it almost means nothing.

4)   There are definitely people that can’t read body language, as an example (just in general) that person that everyone know who can’t take a hint, when give the facial expression and still won’t leave you alone until you just walk away.  The ability to read body language and facial expression is a gift and should be held on to as generations pass because without it, the world will end up emotionless, making everything pointless and unneeded, but that is just my opinion.  There is not a time where I can think of a benefit to not being able to read body language would come in handy, the world can only benefit with it.

Piltdown Man Hoax

Charles Dawson found Piltdown man in Piltdown, England back in the early 1900’s. Companied by Arthur Smith Woodward and Father Pier Thayer. The affects that it had on people were negative because it was a distraction to the scientist and fooled scientist for over 40 years. The findings made scientist believe that the jawbone and skull bone the Dawson found were of an ancient ancestor to that of the humans, an ape like human.  The responses at first was surprising because it was a new find, but as years went on and technology got better, the responses turned into shock because the “fossils” the Dawson found showed to be under 100 years old, making it seem as though Dawson fakes his findings for the attention.

The faults that were seen in this experience were that Dawson may have been apart of and the leader of a false fossil discovery.  It negative impacts the scientific process by stalling the current findings that are around them.  Faking the findings caused scientist to now believe that Dawson was just doing this for attention and the publicity on his geological findings.  This also puts his other partners in the same shoes, though not as bad as his own, it has a negative forces on them as well because being apart of the findings, people now think that they helped Dawson fake his findings.

With newer technology to measure the fluorine content in fossils, scientist were able to find out just how old the “fossils” that Dawson found were. Also, to find out more, the microscope revealed that the teeth were possibly filed down, the skull (maybe as a fossil) were cut by a steel knife, and the “fossils” were stained to look as old as it appeared.  When scientist concluded that the skull actually belonged to a female orangutan.

If by “human” factor, meaning leaving everything to machines and chemicals, I think it is possible to remove, but how would that help the findings? The human factor is, in my opinion, the safety net of any operation.  It provides the, “What if…?” or “what about…?” to everything around us.  The human factor is the alarm system, without it we wouldn’t have theories, let alone questions about anything.  It is meant to make us as human beings more alert and aware that something, like the hoax, could happen and it’s our job to not let it happen by checking our records and proofing everything to the dot.

The life lesson is to not always believe what you hear, or in this case, see as well.  Also, to always verify a source if it doesn’t seem true.  Just because something looks real or sounds believable, you shouldn’t always trust it because it could be false. The person you hear something from could have heard something wrong making it a lie to you when you think it’s what was really said. The “telephone game” is how rumors are spread, not matter how little something is.  Also, as well as lies, seeing something might not always be true because someone could have made something look believable like we saw with the hoax. 

5 Primates and their Diets

I wrote the post in sections: a, b, c, and then d (pictures are out of order, but they are there).  Starting with my resources first.

Lemur: http://www.globio.org/glossopedia/article.aspx?art_id=49

Spider Monkey: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/spider-monkey/

Baboon : http://www.imfene.org/baboon-biology/baboon-ecology

Gibbon: http://a-z-animals.com/animals/gibbon/

Chimpanzee: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/chimpanzee/

Environment (a):

Lemur: lemurs rule the treetops of the tropical rainforest. Wild lemurs live only on Madagascar, a large island off the east coast of Africa, and on the nearby Comoros Islands.

Spider Monkey: Spider monkeys live in the tropical rain forests of Central and South America and far north in Mexico. They have long arms and gripping tails that enable them to move from branch to branch and tree to tree.

Baboon: Baboons are found in almost every habitat across Africa, multiple species of baboons live in savanna habitats and are called 'savanna' baboons, olive baboons also live in the tropical forests of West Africa, hamadryads baboons, which inhabit the semi-deserts of Ethiopia and the southwestern Arabian Peninsula.

Gibbon: The gibbon is a small sized ape, found inhabiting the dense jungles and tropical rain forests across southeast Asia. Gibbons belong to the lesser ape family, which are closely related to the great apes. Gibbons are arboreal animals, which means that they spend the majority of their lives in the trees. Living in the trees has its advantages for the gibbon as the gibbon has plenty of food and is also a safe distance above ground from predators.

Chimpanzee: Chimpanzees live in social communities of several dozen animals, and can habituate themselves to African rain forests, woodlands, and grasslands. Although they normally walk on all fours, chimpanzees can stand and walk upright. By swinging from branch to branch they can also move quite efficiently in the trees, where they do most of their eating.

Diet (b):

Lemur: Many lemurs are herbivores. They will eat almost everything the forest’s trees and plants have to offer. Ring-tailed lemurs eat fruits, flowers, buds, bark, sap, seeds, and leaves. Some species, such as the mouse lemurs, are omnivores. They eat insects, eggs, frogs, and lizards as well as plants.

Spider Monkey: Spider monkeys find food in the treetops and feast on nuts, fruits, leaves, bird eggs, and spiders.

Baboon: Baboons are omnivorous and opportunistic in their feeding, which means they will eat almost anything and will change their diets as the environment around them changes.  Baboon diets include a combination of fruit, flowers, seeds, pods, leaves, gum, and underground storage organs from a wide array of plant taxa as well as almost any small animal that they can catch, Baboons typically choose foods that are high in protein and lipids and low in fiber and potential toxins.

Gibbon: Gibbons are omnivorous animals meaning that they eat a mixture of both plant and animal matter. The main food of the gibbon is ripe fruit, which grow around them in the trees, and makes up around three quarters of the gibbon's diet. Gibbons also prey on insects, eggs, spiders and small birds and reptiles.

C: Chimps are generally fruit and plant eaters, but they also consume insects, eggs, and meat, including carrion. They have a tremendously varied diet that includes hundreds of known foods.

Environment Influence (c):

Lemur: Because the Lemurs live in trees, there diet with treetop leaves will always be there. I think the environment affected the diet because since they’re not usually on the ground all they have to eat are the tree leaves and the fruits that grow on the branches as well as the flowers that grow there too.

Spider Monkey: Because of evolution and the growth of the tails, allowing them to swing from treetops, the spider monkeys are allowed to swing from tree top to tree top gathering food that grow on the tree tops. Because the evolution, the food they hunt must be in the trees.

Baboon: The ability the baboon has, able to change their diet as the environment does, this makes the baboon the most adaptable to the environment. As long as they know the plant/ animal they are eating doesn’t have anything that will throw them off their diet, they will eat it.

Gibbon: Gibbons, like spider monkeys, live in trees, making their food hunting in their environment limited to the insects and fruits like are growing within the trees.  The environment affects their food because it’s mostly in the trees, never on the ground.

Chimpanzee: Because they can work on both the ground and in the trees, their environment hunting is wide. Being able to eat insects in both the trees and on the ground, the environment doesn’t affect their diet as much as it does to the lemurs, spider monkeys, and gibbons.

Photo of eating food (d):

 Lemur

 Chimpanzee

 Baboon

 Gibbon

 Spider Monkey

Homologous and Analogous Structures

My findings of a homologous and an analogous structure between the human, the bat/bird, and the whale:

1a) A whale’s fin and a human’s hand share the same bones in their “arms” though they are used for slightly different uses, whales swimming, humans for everyday activities.

1b) The fin on a whale and the arm of a human consist of the same bones though one creature may have bigger ones. The fin has bigger bones and no fingers because to evolve in the water the whale had to learn how to swim and the human needed to evolve in a way that allowed the use of the fingers to pick things up and adapt the their environment. Not to mention typing, like how I am right now.

1c) From my research, the whale and human common ancestor was the bear. Bears that found no need for their legs turned into whales while after time the bear learned to be human. They all originate from a mammal before them, but over time changed to what they are today. (Source: http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110301215429AATeEBm)

1d) 

 2a) Two analogous structures would be the human and the bat/bird because they have the same bones, but one uses it for flying while the other uses it for everyday activities.

2b) The similarity is that of the whale and the human, except the bones structure is different in that a bat or birds bones must be light enough to allow them to lift themselves off the ground to fly. Their bone structure is also made so that the “fingers” are longer to allow the wings to grow in and become functional.

2c) I think that these two did share a common ancestor, but they didn’t become as close in evolution making them completely two different creatures.

2d)