Reading Journal, The Well-Dressed Ape, Chapters 4-5 Quotes

Chapter 4 – Free As a Bird: Range

Under truly dire conditions, by chilling myself severely, I could become a cold-weather beast in a few weeks. Scientists have soaked human males in tanks of 57°F (14°C) water for an hour at a time to get precise measurements of what happens. They found that cooling a male for an hour every other day, for four to six weeks, was enough to harden a body into cold condition. By the end of the experiment, the males were burning 20 percent less energy to keep themselves comfortable in the tank. And that’s what acclimation is all about: making a more efficient animal.
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A human body that’s inhaling -25°F (-32°C) air spends a whopping one-quarter of its total energy budget just to preheat that air so it doesn’t shock the lungs.
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Of all the humans who have penetrated all the corners of our range, these--the cold and wet humans--seem toughest to me. A squirrel who spends seven cold months in a voluntary coma is remarkable. But a human who faces far worse weather and doesn’t take refuge in a coma is more so.
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The changeability of DNA thrills me. A single challenge--elevation--has produced three separate evolutionary adaptations.
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Instead of growing a woolly coat to insulate us from incoming heat, the entire human race opted to scrap the fur and rely on water cooling. Even when human skin is cool, it leaks moisture. Our leaking rate is similar to that of a tropical caiman (alligator), who never strays far from water.

Such a soggy skin can be a serious hazard, but as long as we’re able to replenish the moisture and salt we ooze, our cooling ability is spectacular. Humans can sweat more than any other animal--nearly a gallon an hour, if need be. In fact, the more days I spend in the Gobi Desert, the more profligate I become with the sweat. My body’s temporary solution to excess heat is to throw more water at it. The long-term solution, however, is out of my reach. Bushmen adapted to Africa’s Kalahari Desert, and Australia’s desert Aborigines (and probably other desert dwellers who have evaded scientists’ stationary bicycles) have evolved low sweating rates, and they stay cool just the same. This water-saving trick is available only to those whose ancestors have spent many generations evolving in a habitat so dry that it kills the leakiest and rewards those who perspire the least. Tropical humans also retain a functioning gene that regulates the amount of salt they lose in sweat. Populations farther from the equator, however, like my own ancestral humans, let this gene go to seed, and our ability to retain salt is patchy.


Chapter 5 – A Dog in the Manger: Territoriality

And that, in an eggshell, is the reason so many animals are territorial. When everyone agrees on the boundaries, and believes there will be trouble if they cross them, then everyone also spends less time fighting.
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If I were forced to rely on my one-fifth-acre territory for all my needs, it would be interesting to see whether I died of thirst before I ran out of squirrels and woodchucks to eat. . . .

As the division of labor within a culture splits tasks more and more finely, each individual territory serves fewer purposes. . . .

On the other hand, my territory has become more diffuse. Village commons and centers now provide a new form of shared territory held by all the members in a “band.” Thus the cemetery up the street itself, and the park downtown, and the beach two blocks east. For that matter, a diluted form of my territory extends clear across the state of Maine, which, like my birthplace, also clinches a corner of my identity. Maine, despite being an arbitrary line drawn on a map, somehow feels like my property. The entire political jigsaw puzzle of “the United States of America” holds some claim on me, too.
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Gauging the quality of a modern human territory is a squishy business, because culture has so deeply infected the issue. For instance, in a herding culture, the ideal territory is a big one with lush grass. But in a fishing culture, humans would dismiss grass and scramble to control the best boat launch. And in my culture, which converts all its resources to money and uses that to advertise status, a territory’s most important function is its ability to telegraph that status.
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Among many species, the rate of aggression rises with population density. . . . It is males in the human animal, too, who seem to suffer most from crowding. . . . if you pack males into one jail and females into another, the males appear to suffer more health problems. Even if you pack males into a house, they get sicker, according to one study. Boys in crowded homes in India display a rise in blood pressure that girls do not experience. Just being in a crowd where they’re forced to touch humans they’d rather not touch causes a male’s stress indicators to rise.
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Whatever the source of crumminess, all blighted territories seem to cause stress for their inhabitants, and stress in turn can cause any number of physical ailments. A bad territory is bad for you.
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In the rare event that push does come to shove, the famous home-field advantage can be a real asset. When biologists first noticed it among wild animals, they did the scientific equivalent of rubbing their eyes in disbelief. Yet it held up under close scrutiny: a sniveling runt of a bird can prevail over a big bruiser if the showdown takes place on the runt’s territory. This has been replicated in a number of bird species, and in humans, too.
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In 1997, a sociologist measured the time it takes for a driver at a shopping mall to vacate a parking space. He found that a human takes seven seconds longer when another human is waiting for the space. And if the waiting human blasts his horn, the occupant will defend the temporary territory for an additional twelve seconds. This shocked me, as a human who often hustles to accommodate my fellow humans. Even more shocking was this detail, lost in the headlines: Males (and only males) will actually abandon a territory quicker if the intruder is driving a more expensive car. Females are either unimpressed by such status displays or, like me, they don’t know their Alfa from their Edsel.
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. . . gypsy cultures . . . main resource is neither pasture nor hunting ground, but the villages of other humans. According to the Pukiwas culture in Pakistan, each family claims not just a physical territory, which encompasses a circuit of villages, but also a professional territory--a set of skills and services to offer within that circuit. . . .

Each profession uses a different resource in a village (the Lohar exploit the “farm implements budget,” while the Kanjar work the “entertainment budget,” for instance). Therefore, their territories can overlap without friction--as a crow’s overlaps a hummingbird’s. But two jugglers in one neighborhood? That’s untenable. . . .

Among those Pukiwas who peddle their goods from house to house, another territorial tradition holds sway. A female who sells brooms and baskets “owns” certain clients. Their shelters constitute her territory, and woe betide the competitor who should seek to invade. As with many other animals, a Pukiwas mother’s territory becomes the territory of her daughters, in time. Among the Pukiwas, these human territories are far more crucial and enduring than their tent camps at the edge of town.