[RiddleRose]: 298.Meditations.humans

You know, I think humans are badly designed. I mean, look at us! We have to refuel at least two times a day, we sleep for half our life, we are only compatible with one element (earth) and despite our big brains, we are stupid enough to be destroying that! Seriously, look at us! Our skin can be pierced easily, we get cold fast, but we have no fur to keep us warm, (except the little tiny body hairs that do practically nothing), we get too hot easily, we lose water quickly, we get sick eaily... the list goes on and on!

Consider our eating habits. Most humans in the (very) well-fed country of the USA eat three times a day, breakfast, lunch, and supper. We also snack betweentimes. If we get too hungry, we get weak, or cranky, or too thin. We get diseases. Our bones get brittle.

In a less well-off country, say somewhere in rural Africa where food is not so plentiul, they still need to eat at least twice a day. They may not be able to, because food is too scarce, but they need to. That's why there's so much starvation and famine out there. People need to eat so often that the food is used up, and we have no way to store fat for long periods of time like a hibernating bear, or a camel in the desert.

Now consider the sleeping factor. Every animal needs to sleep. some sleep more than others. (Ahemcatsahem) But we sleep half of our lives away! And while we're asleep there is nothing to protect us. We can't naturally camouflage, we smell quite strongly, we are, in effect, helpless. If a predator were to approach us while we were sleeping, we would have no way to scare it away. We don't even wake up quickly enough to run away.

Let's move on to our habitat. A human being, in order to live needs a)a stable and solid ground on which to stand, b)a shelter of some sort, c)a food source that is relatively near to the shelter, and d)a source of clean water also relatively near the shelter. Of course, all of these things are reliant on the ground, except possibly the source of water. 

In other words, we are forced by our physical makeup to live on land. We cannot swim for long enough to live in the water like a fish or dolphin. We cannot fly like a bird at all, and so cannot live in trees. (I suppose you could build a treehouse, but that is terribly inconvenient). We could technically live belowground, but we do need vitamin d, and the main source of that is the sun. Also, there is not much that lives belowground that is terribly good to eat, so we would need to go to the surface to gather food.

Now imagine that there is a very large and very scary predator coming at you. You could a) play dead, b) run away, or c) fight it and hope you win. Now pretend that this predator is some sort of scavenger. Playing dead obviously won't work. It is much faster than you, and has large teeth and sharp claws besides, so you probably don't want to run away from it. Fighting is now your only option. But it is still fast and strong and has formidable weapons. Unless you have some sort of long distance weapon such as a gun or an bow and arrow, you are probably dead. 

So enough of that. Let's talk about heat. Humans of course need heat to stay alive. We are warmblooded, so we can make our own heat. However, unlike most mammals, we have no thick coat of fur to keep that heat in. Sure, we have little body hairs, but they are so small that they really don't help all that much. So all that's left is our skin. Skin is a very interesting part of the body. It is our main natural protection, but it tears so easily as to be quite ridiculous! How many times have you cut yourself, I mean, really! I bet you can't even count them. And once the skin is breached, there is nothing to hold the blood in except it's natural clotting behaviours. 

Blood is also interesting. Because the main purpose of blood is to transport oxygen to all parts of the body, it becomes the ultimate heater. The oxygen we inhale with every breath we take will all be at "room temperature" so to speak. Whatever the temperature is in the environment around us, that is the temperature of the oxygen that goes into the blood. Then that oxygen is put into the bloodstream, and whatever temperature it was sort of melds into the body's natural temperture. However, there will be some sort of change in the temperature of both the oxygen and the blood. Then the slightly cooler or warmer blood gets pumped by the heart to all of the far reaches of the body.

There is another reason why the blood plays a key role in human temperature control. Imagine it is a frigidly cold winter day. Your nose is cold, your toes are cold, and your fingers are so numb you can't even feel them anymore. However, your torso is still toasty warm, in fact, it's so warm that you're starting to sweat a little under your warm coat. How can there be such a huge range of temperatures in your body? And why can't some of that warmth spread itself out to your numb fingers?

Well, what happened was that as you stepped outside your body registered the cold. Blood rushed away from the extremities (fingers, toes, nose, ears) because they are not necessary to your survival. It retreated deep within you, keeping vital organs warm and alive. Well, you say, that makes sense. Yes it does. However, what happens when you get frostbite in your fingers and toes? Then you have a problem. Also, note where the brain is located. It's nowhere near the rest of your vital organs. So blood has to keep pumping up to your head. That's why the top of your head loses heat faster than any other part of the body. 

So enough with heat. Now let's talk about water. All animals need water to survive. Some need it less than others. Animals that have adapted to desert living need very little water. Some store it, like the camel. But then there's the other end of the scale, with animals that actually live in the water (fish, dolphins, coral, etc.). The in-between graound is where most mammals land. We drink water, but we don't live in it, and neither can we go without it for very long. I believe the human body is somewhere around 70% water. We have ot maintain that, or we get dehydrated. If we go to far over that, we get overhydrated. Either will kill us.

Once again, that marvelous skin of ours helps us out. It's waterproof, which means we can go swimming and go out in the rain without becoming waterlogged. Unfortunately, when we get too hot we start sweating, which loses us water very quickly. In hot enough climates, we must drink litres and litres of water each day just to stay alive.

Then there's sickness. In the past, most of the periods where there was large amounts of death included some sort of disease. There was the Black Plague, which very nearly depopulated Europe. There was Smallpox, which wiped out the Native Americans. There was the great flu epidemic. Malaria, SARS, AIDS, West Nile Virus, cancer, now the bird flu... Obviously humans are very very susceptible to diseases. We need a fairly balanced amount of vitamins in our systems to keep from getting those diseases, and even then we sometimes get them anyway.

A good diet helps with that problem, but what happens when a balanced diet is not available to you? Sailors lost at sea got scurvy from lack of fresh vegetables and fruits. If you eat only vegetables and fruit you're not getting enough protein. If you eat nothing with any fat in it, you will eventually starve. Believe it or not, we humans do need some fat on our bodies. But if you have too much fat, your chance of having a heart problem goes up. If you drink too much alcohol, your liver will collapse. Being near radiation increases your chances of cancer or brain damage. If you smoke, your chance of lung cancer goes up. If you have sex with the wrong person, your entire immune system could backfire, and you could be killed by a common cold. If you step on a rusty nail you could get tetanus. The list just goes on and on and on. It's amazing that there are any humans left alive at all!

Then of course, you say, "Aha! You are leaving out our opposable thumbs! They let us use tools!" Well yeah, we have opposable thumbs. So do monkeys. And yeah, we use tools. So do monkeys. And monkeys have opposable big toes too, so they have one up on us there.

"But what about our brains?" you ask, "Surely you haven't forgotten about those! Monkeys don't have the same size brains as we do. We have been able to adapt with the help of our brains so that we can survive all of the problems you just presented."

To that I say that dolphins have the same size brains as we do. I say that you should look around at what we have done with our big brains. We have despoiled the very earth we live on, so much so that it begins to die around us. We have created war, weapons, the atomic bomb. We have clearcut forests, dried up entire seas, melted glaciers, caused entire species to go extinct. An you ask what good our big brains are? Read Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut, and you'll see what use those brains are.