Re: Is the AAH a legitimate hypothesis? Of course it is.

From: Jason Eshleman (jae_at_vici.ucdavis.edu)
Date: 01/10/05 

Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 23:36:08 +0000 (UTC)

In article <1105345622.832138.324530@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
Algis Kuliukas <algis@RiverApes.com> wrote:

[snip]
>
>Exactly. That's one reason why sweat cooling would act as a great
>adjunct to going for a dip. If the river's got crocs in there, we'll
>sweat it out for an hour until we've thrown in some rocks to scare them
>off, otherwise we're in for a dip.
>
>Don't you see? You're arguing for an extreme position: The water was so
>dangerous no one would ever go for a dip and humans would be so clever
>they'd find water anywhere anyway, therfore sweat cooling must have
>evolved *away* from water sources.
>
>I'm arguing for a common sense position: The best way to get cool is to
>go for a dip. If that's not possible because we've wandered away from
>the river, or we think there might be a croc lurking there, we can
>sweat to keep cool for a short time, but we'd better keep close to the
>water's edge to get a drink or have a dip when we get the chance.

Whether or not something is "the best way" or not isn't a scientific
evidence as evolution has no teleological goals. The mechanisms of
evolution make due with what's there without regards to any ideal optimal
solution that an engineer might evision.

The notion that evaporative cooling through sweat is somehow "wasteful"
seems to imply some value judgement beyond the effectiveness of the
situation. It works, and it works well. Sweating works to keep humans
cool in circumstances where we need to dump heat. It is not the only way
to do this, but it is a way to do this and it's effective enough to allow
humans to operate in a variety of hot conditions, conditions where other
cooling methods often don't seem to do the trick, "wasteful" or not.

It doesn't appear that other creatures with regular access to water,
creatures who immerse themselves regularly engage in the same sort of
secondary method to keep cool. While I could be mistaken, I don't know of
any creatures who have such a pronounced, evolved redundancy in place to
cool off when it becomes dangerous to get in the water. This is not to
say that such a scenario is impossible, but the argument that it "makes
sense," like the argument that sweating "wastes" water, smack of some
teleological direction more than an actual evaluation of what we can and
cannot do and what other creatures can and cannot do and in practice, have
adapted to do.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Is the AAH a legitimate hypothesis? Of course it is.
    ... That's one reason why sweat cooling would act as a great ... otherwise we're in for a dip. ... >>they'd find water anywhere anyway, ... wasteful mechanism would evolve in tandem with clever but energetically ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Firewomen
    ... brazilian times) turned to the lady and said out loud, "yeah, and you ... how well one's sweat cooling could work. ... hidden danger associated with the high heat/low humidity- your sweat ...
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