MadSci Network: Evolution
Query:

Re: How would we be different if humans had evolved Cold blood rather than warm

Date: Mon Aug 2 16:00:13 2010
Posted By: Mike Klymkowsky, Professor
Area of science: Evolution
ID: 1280339108.Ev
Message:

What a fabulous question! And the real answer is "who knows?"

Perhaps one has to be a mammal to become human-like. Cold-blooded dinosaurs had plenty of time (more than 100 million years), and they did not manage it.

That said, we can make some not completely silly guesses.

The important point about being warm-blooded relates to the fact that living things depend upon chemical processes (reactions) that produce life (and movement and thinking), and chemical reactions are influenced by temperature.

In warm-blooded organisms, body temperature is kept constant (through the constant release of energy obtained by turning complex molecules into simpler, more stable molecules). Warm blooded organisms are essentially always "ready to go."

In cold-blooded organisms, body temperature depends much more on the outside temperature. A cold-blooded lizard cools down at night, and takes a while to warm up during the day. Only when it is warm is it really active.

SO, if nothing else, we might expect a cold-blooded, human-like creature to think (and move) very slowly when cold and faster (and maybe even better) when warm. Who knows whether it would think differently than a warm blooded human? Perhaps it would think differently when cold and when warm.


A little historical aside: If we think about tetrapods (humans are tetrapods), they evolved from an amphibian-like ancestor, rougly 400 million years ago. These ancestors and likely to have been cold-blooded (or poikilothermic), like fish.

During evolution, the tetrapod family tree split into the synapsids (mammal-llike reptiles) that gave rise (eventually) to mammals (and humans), and diapsids, which gave riseto the reptiles we know today, and the birds.

Humans are, like other mammals, are warm blooded (or homeothermic).

While most reptiles are cold-blooded, birds are not - they are warm-blooded.

This is interesting because it suggests that it is possible to evolve warmbloodedness from a cold-blooded ancestor (and visa versa).


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