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Human Variation

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    1.  High altitudes can be difficult for most humans to navigate for a few reasons. There are extreme changes in climate, days can be very hot and nights can be freezing and the air pressure is low. Low air pressure is dangerous as it makes it more difficult for oxygen to enter our system as needed. This results in hypoxia, which is the lack of oxygen, and whose symptoms start as the inability to do low impact physical activity without fatiguing and can escalate to pulmonary and cerebral edema in the worst cases. Miscarriages are more common at higher altitudes as well due to the fetuses receiving less oxygen from the mothers. 2. There are four adaptations that help with the human responses to high altitudes; short term, facultative, developmental and cultural.     Short Term : One short term response when a human is moving into a higher altitude is an increase of pulse and blood pressure. This happens because the heart is working harder to move oxygen throug...

Malthus' Push

 Thomas Malthus was a political economist that helped Darwin close in on the theory of natural selection. Malthus studied how the increasing human population could lead to an inability to feed everyone, we would end up with more mouths to feed than food. He proposed that the human population needed to be controlled to prevent "famine and misery". Malthus said the same was true for the populations of plants and animals also, populations had to be controlled by something or they would take over. Darwin reading what Malthus had published concluded that living things don't necessarily reproduce enough just for stability, as he previously thought. They reproduce more than what's necessary and they all have different traits.  He realized that some animals were better fit to handle some conditions in the wild. This makes these animals more likely to survive and reproduce, therefore, passing their traits on to their offspring. Without reading Mathus' findings Darwin event...