Are humans wired to survive?

staff writers from how Stuff Works dot Com. How's it going, Chuck, Good, Josh, just a pair of pair of writers. I see you're still rocking your braves, Kathy, even after you said I'm not so sure I'm watching anymore this season. Yeah, but the hair's getting lost. Well, I just thought you were going to say you're a true fan. I am a true fan. So Chuck, you know the braves might not be doing that. Well, it's almost like they've lost their will to survive. That's really great set up, Thank you

very much, Chuck. You know that if they have lost their collect the will to survive, that is flying in the face of evolution. In the opinion of many supposedly we are wired for survival. Yeah, I believe we are. I think you should give the example of the Japanese hiker Mitsu Taka Yuchi Koshi. I love that guy's name. Yeah, he's great, He's a good guy. This is just a couple of years ago, and uh, this guy was hiking

with his friends in western Japan went off. I think he went to go down the mountain by himself for some reason, and he tripped. As as good as I can tell is he tripped, was not unconscious. The last thing he says he did was fell asleep in a grassy field. And you might say, to yourself, what's the big deal. The big deal is he woke up twenty four days later. Yeah, he was awakened by rescue workers. Twenty four days later. He was unconscious supposedly the whole time.

The whole time. He when they found him, he was a cool seventy one degrees fahrenh height, which is basically the temperature of an average corpse that has not been refrigerated. His his organs were almost completely shut down, almost no heartbeat. And uh, he lived because they surmise that he almost went to a state of hibernation like a barwood. So then that we're not supposed to be able to do that. No, we're definitely not supposed to be able to do that.

And I've tried that. I have to Actually I usually do it every winner, but it's unsuccessful and successfully I can rarely get my body temperature down. That low seventy nine is the lowest I've ever gone, and that took a lot of willpower. So, UM, yeah, you use this guy as an example in your article are humans Wired to survive? Uh? And I think it's a sterling example. I I I we are um seemingly programmed to continue to live, to protect our genes, to protect our offspring. Um.

And you get some great examples. This is one of those wonderful articles where somebody in one of our editorial brainstorm meetings came up with this idea. It was based on zero research. Um. When I was doing supplemental research for this podcast, I went on typed in humans wired survived nothing? There's nothing out there, there's no study that

this was based on. It was Chuck using his own brain and you know, drawing all of these conclusions from existing UH data, And I thought it was beautiful try. I appreciate that. You know. When I when I went to do this research, I did the same thing you did, and I really didn't find much and nothing. I decided that really the only way to research if we're actually wired naturally to survive is to see what human instincts

we naturally have that we don't think about. They're just in us that helped keep us alive, and not just instincts. You also mentioned biological processes like our old friend fight or flight, Right, Chuck, I, I wrote an article on the theory of everything when it was about this guy who figured out these this lead group that's really mind boggling math. Uh, that that was the answer to everything.

It was the underlying cause. I think based on our podcast, the fight or flight response is the theory of everything. We always come back to it. Yeah, it does come up a lot. Yeah, So we'll we'll go over all

more time, real quick, shall we. Okay, So, basically, you're confronted with danger, your brain releases or send signals for your body to release hormones like adrenaline, which act on your cells, and basically, uh, energy is taken from digestion and put towards enlarging your pupils, increasing your respiration, your heart rate, basically getting you ready to either you know,

pound somebody or run away from a pounding. And the fact that this happens involuntarily, that we don't have to think about it, that you can't really control it, even if you do try to think about it, because people

try to and you can't. Right. It's it's that that in and of itself is kind of evidence for for survival, based at the very least on Darwin's theory of evolution, which which is very much about well almost all about natural selection, right right, and uh, you know, I mean it all sin is really a pretty basic concept, and I can illustrate it to you guys like you did

my article. Let's say you have red worms and brown worms, and over time um birds decide they really like to eat these red worms, so they keep eating red worms, and then they just start reproducing less and less. The brown worms are not getting eaten, so they're reproducing more and more, and over time the red worms dwindle until eventually they could go away completely. So only the strong survive.

And that's kind of the basis of old Chucky Darwin's whole thing exactly and fight or flight is almost physical evidence of that. Yeah. So, so what are some other examples that you gave. Well, there's one, Uh, actually, there's so many um babies crying. One way, we're wired because a lot of babies are actually most babies in the animal kingdom are born um with a little bit of ability. I mean, a newborn horse will stand up and be

running around within the hour. Sharks are born underwater and they're pretty much on their own right from the moment they're born. Human babies are really the only ones that are born kind of defenseless. So a baby's cry, it's just their natural instinct, uh, to keep alive, telling mom and dad, hey, this is what I need or I need something. And uh. It's further evidence in the fact that they can change the volume and the pitch of their cry depending on how urgent their needs are. So

that's hard wired, buddy. Yeah. Well, another example that you gave was that we have been shown to be able to visually recognize changes in our our environment more and with living things more than inanimate objects. And I actually I was looking into that, and h I found that there was a two thousand five Arizona State study that suggests that that very um instinct to pick up living things, uh, may actually tie into modern prejudices. You want to hear

about that? Yeah, this is news to me. Yeah, it's it's it's kind of cool. UM. Although it's basically just you know, I'm sure there's some neo Nazi group that's picked it up to, you know, use it as evidence that we shouldn't mix races or something stupid like that. UM. But basically, what the Arizona State researchers postulated is that we UM, since we're programmed to recognize changes in our environment, and we used to live in these small tribes of

people that looked a lot alike. Um, anytime we saw somebody who didn't look like the rest of us, we usually perceive them as a threat. That makes sense. And even though we don't live in tribes anymore, this you know, relic of tribal living or hunting, hunting and gathering UM

still remains and explains modern prejudices. Why you know, people are xenophobic and racist and all that and anything that's not like you is exactly And I thought I thought that was pretty interesting that it tied into that instinct that survival instinct of visually recognizing organic changes in the in the environment. Yeah, I've got another one if I

want to hear it, Chuck good. Uh, there was a study that the BBC did for the television program called Human Instinct that was really kind of cool that I watched, And, uh, this isn't the most scientific study, as you've pointed out to me in our in our downtime, but it isn't pretty cool nonetheless. Um, you know, humans are born with an immune system, and there's different genes that that indicate what kind of immune system we have. You know, you might be better at fighting off the common cold. I

might be better at fighting fighting off yellow fever. People have these immune systems, and um, the theory is that you want to pick out a partner for reproduction that has a different immune system than your own, because you'll have babies that are more robust against a wider range of sickness and disease. And they've proven this by the fact that or by the theory that people uh do this through their nose actually smell rather than visually when

they're picking out a reproductive partner. And how did they prove this? I love this this test? Yeah, they got the the show's host, and they got these six women at the University of Newcastle, six lookers to sleep in the same T shirt to night straight. They put each of their T shirts in a jar and uh, you know, they had the blood work done before to see what

kind of immune system they all had. And then this show's host sniffed all these shirts and put two aside that he found the most pleasing to his nose, and then to aside that he found the least pleasing, and then the other two. I guess you could take it or leave it. And interestingly enough, it supported the results

the findings. They the two that he liked the most shared zero of the same jeans immune system jeanes as he did, and the two that he did not like shared the most five out of six or the same. So this kind of indicates that we we smell around for a good partner that will effectively leave us with robust babies that will keep the human race going. You know, the reason I find it unscientific is because you can't go wrong with girls from the University Newcastle. Like you said,

they're all lookers, go fighting brown ales. Um. But this whole concept of um of creating wanting innately to create more robust offspring. That kind of jibes with um Richard Dawkins theories. Have you heard of him? Not the family feud host. Uh, that was Richard Dawson, Right, this is Richard Dawkins UM, And they're often confused. They kind of look alike a little bit. They used to party together

in the seventies. Richard Dawkins is a zoologist and just based on his observations and some studies of that kind of thing, he concluded that the human body and us in general are just kind of these um mindless vehicles for genes. That it's really um our genes that are interested in survival, and we get our instincts from, you know, our genes and our genetic makeup that kind of thing which command ourselves, which in turn basically make us do all the things that we do or carry out all

the process that we're supposed to carry out. Uh. And and basically the the our entire point of existence is to protect and pass along this genetic line as if we were wired to survive. Yeah, yeah, it's thrilling. It's proof enough for me, agreed, So uh, I think everybody would be very well off to go read Chuck's article are Humans Wired to Survive? On How Stuff Works? Dot Com?

Don't you agree to you? I hope so, and stick around to find out how you can get six dollars from Charles Bryant right after this stuff you should know is brought to you by Visa. We all have things to think about, like say, what's the best site to buy a new leather jacket, or whether to buy the

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your own pocket? Dude? How so? Well, it's called the economic stimulus check that everyone received not too long ago from Husident Bush and uh. I had a hard time getting worked up for that personally, because it's kind of our money to begin with. Yeah, yeah, I chipped in one two hundred and sixty millions of back six hundred dollars, So thanks for giving us back our own money. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's a it's kind of a thing. But um, I guess the real question is are you actually going to hand this over to one of our listeners or me? I'm not. But the real question is does that really make a difference in our economy? I don't know, but I know our colleague Jane McGrath actually wrote an article called can tax rebates really prevent an economic downturn? I would advise anyone interested in they answer that question to go read it on how stuff works dot Com. Wouldn't too.

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