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  Human Variation: Cold Weather 1.Colder weather affects homeostasis in humans by lowering internal body temperature past 94 degrees Fahrenheit which is called hypothermia. Since internal heat is not being produced quick enough the body may start to shiver or speed up the metabolic rate, both ways of increasing heat production. This is usually not as efficient  because it requires the individual to increase their caloric intake. The other negative effect that the cold has on the body is through heat retention, not expulsion. Vasoconstriction reduces the blood flow near the body’s surface so the internal organs can retain enough heat to function. This can cause frostbite in the outer extremities of the body, in which the outer skin and tissue start to freeze and form ice crystals in the body. This limits the mobility of fingers and toes and in worst cases the tissue can die and those appendages need to be amputated. 2. Short-term adaptation: Shivering Shivering is a short term response

Language in conversation

  One Person Charades  The first portion of this language assignment required that no written or spoken language would be used. When I was first reading the assignment I thought it was going to be a very challenging thing to keep a conversation going for 15 minutes, so I spoke in a group environment with my family instead. My sister likened the assignment to the game charades which I was basically doing for the entire duration. The main reason that this first part was difficult to me was because I did not know how to express my thoughts and would instead either dumb it down or just not respond because I physically could not get my point across. Also I found myself listening to the other people talk most of the time because I did not want to ruin the flow of conversation that they had going. I did notice myself trying to exaggerate my movements as much as possible and tapping the specific person on the shoulder if I had a question for them or reenacting what I was thinking like charades

Piltdown Hoax

  On February 14th, 1912 in a small village in the rural county of Sussex, England, a local amuatuar geologist named Charles Dawson wrote to Sir Arthur Smith Woodward about an exciting new discovery. A bed dating back to the Pleistocene age was found at Piltdown along with the bone of a human skull. This caused Woodward to join Dawson at the bed and eventually they found an ape-like jawbone with human-like teeth, nicknamed the Piltdown Man. The most significant thing about this discovery was not that it was considered the missing link between, but that it proved Darwin’s theory and that the earliest humans had come from England and not Africa. The first suspicion that people had about the jawbone was that it possibly did not match the prior skull bone found at the site and that the canine tooth was missing. Later a canine tooth was found at the site to prove that this jawbone was one of the first early humans and another piltdown man was found a few miles away. The hoax was revealed in

Analogy and Homology

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  Analogous Two species that have an analogous trait are the  North American porcupine and the purple sea urchin. The North American porcupine can be found most numerous in the northwestern U.S and all of Canada. They are one of the largest rodents weighing in at 20 pounds. They have short brown or black fur, round bodies and a small head. Their most defining trait are quills that are lightly attached to the body and used for defense. Porcupines are not aggressive unless provoked and spend most of their time in the trees to find food since they are herbivores. They are solitary and nocturnal creatures that live in hollow trees or caves and are also very good swimmers. Sea urchins can be found globally across the oceans and reside from intertidal to about 5,000 meters below sea level. They are invertebrates most closely related to sea cucumbers and sea stars and feed off of algae. They are small, rounded creatures about 3 inches across that use a tube foot with the help of spines to get

Historical Influences on Darwin

  The person that had the biggest impact on Darwin’s development of his theory of natural selection was Thomas Malthus. Malthus’s work was the last push that Darwin needed to concoct his theory on evolution. Even though Thomas Malthus was an economist, his most famous work, An Essay on the Principle of Population , would have significant and far reaching effects outside his field. The main point of his that would end up influencing both Darwin and Wallace were that populations grew faster than their food supply which created a constant struggle for existence. He also noted that plants and animals create more offspring than can survive, which led to overpopulation. These observations that Malthus made would become the answer to Darwin’s question “What is preventing organisms from reproducing at their potential?”. Darwin built upon the ideas of Malthus to come to his conclusion of natural selection.Food can be thought of as just another resource. Scarcity in resources inevitably leads to