Stuff You Should Know - Are humans wired to survive?

Episode Date: August 19, 2008

Are humans born with survival instincts? Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about human instincts and survival. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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agency would turn out to be a front for a drug pilot who would claim he did it all for this CIA. I'm Lauren Brad Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami. Talk about walking into the devil's den. Listen to Murder in Miami on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, welcome to the podcast. Josh Clark here with Chuck Bryant, pair of staff writers from HowStuffWorks.com. How's it going, Chuck? Good, Josh. Just a pair of writers. I see you're still rocking your braves, Kathy, even after you said, eh, I'm not so sure I'm watching anymore this season. Yeah, but the hair's getting long. 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 a really great setup, Josh. Thank you very much, Chuck. You know that if they have lost their collective will to survive, that is flying in the face of evolution. It is. In the opinion of many. Yeah. Supposedly we are wired for survival. Yeah, I believe we are. I think you should give the example of the Japanese hiker Mitsutaka Yuchi Koshii. I love that guy's name. Yeah, he's great. He's a good guy. This was just a couple of years ago and 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 good as I can tell as he tripped, was knocked 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 24 days later. Yeah, he was awakened by a rescue worker, 24 days later. 24 days later, he was unconscious supposedly the whole time. The whole time. When they found him, he was a cool 71 degrees Fahrenheit, which is basically the temperature of an average corpse that has not been refrigerated. Right. His organs were almost completely shut down, almost no heartbeat and he lived because they surmised that he almost went to a state of hibernation like a bear would, even though we're not supposed to be able to do that. No, we're definitely not supposed to be able to do that. I tried. I have too, actually. I usually do it every winter, but unsuccessfully. I can rarely get

my body temperature down that low, 79 is the lowest I've ever gotten and that took a lot of willpower. So yeah, you use this guy as an example in your article, Are Humans Wired to Survive? And I think it's a sterling example. We are seemingly programmed to continue to live, to protect our genes, to protect our offspring. And you give 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. When I was doing supplemental research for this podcast, I went on and typed in, Humans Wired Survive, nothing. There's nothing out there. There's no study that this was based on. It was Chuck using his own brain and drawing

all of these conclusions from existing data. And I thought it was beautiful. Right. I appreciate that. When I went to do this research, I did the same thing you did and I really didn't find much. 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 help keep us alive. And not just instincts. You also mentioned biological processes like our old friend Fighter Flight. Right. Chuck, I wrote an article on the theory of everything. It was about this guy who figured out this Lee group, this really mind-boggling math that was the answer to everything. It was the underlying cause.

I think just based on our podcast, the Fighter Flight response is the theory of everything. Right. We always come back to it. Yeah, it does come up a lot. Yeah, so we'll go over it one more time real quick, shall we? Sure. Okay, so basically you're confronted with danger. Your brain releases or sends signals for your body to release hormones like adrenaline, which act on your cells and basically 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. Right. 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. No, because people try to and you can't. Right. That in and of itself is kind of evidence for survival based at the very least on Darwin's theory of evolution, which is very much about, well, almost all about natural selection, right? Right. And you don't mean to tell everybody. Yeah, please. Natural selection is really a pretty basic concept and I can illustrate it to you guys like you did in my article. Let's say you have red worms and brown worms. And over time, 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. Right. Yeah. So what are some other examples that you gave? Well, there's one. Actually, there's so many babies crying. Yeah, that was a cool one. One way we're wired because a lot of baby or actually most babies in the animal kingdom are born with a little bit of ability. I mean, a newborn horse will stand up and be running around within the hour. Sharks are born under water 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. Yeah. So a baby's cry is just their

natural instinct to keep alive telling mom and dad, Hey, this is what I need or I need something. And 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. Yeah. So that's hardwired, buddy. Yeah. Well, another example that you gave was that we have been shown to be able to visually recognize changes in our environment. Yeah. And with living things more than inanimate objects. Right. And actually I was looking into that and I found that there was a 2005 Arizona state study that suggests that that very instinct to pick up living things may actually tie into modern prejudices. You want to hear about that? Yeah. This is news to me. Yeah. It's kind of cool. 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. Right. But basically with the Arizona state researchers postulated was that we, 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. Right. Anytime we saw somebody who didn't look like the rest of us, we usually perceive them as a threat. Right. That makes sense. And even though we don't live in tribes anymore, this, you know, relic of tribal living or hunting and gathering still remains and explains modern prejudices. Why, you know, people are xenophobic and racist and all that. Right. Anything that's not like you

is threatening. Exactly. And I thought that was pretty interesting that it tied into that instinct, that survival instinct of visually recognizing organic changes in the environment. Right. Yeah. I've got another one if we... I want to hear it, Chuck. Good. 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 this isn't the most scientific study, as you've pointed out to me in our downtime. I wasn't going to say it, Chuck. But it is pretty cool nonetheless. You know, humans are born with an immune system and there's different genes 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 off

yellow fever. People have these immune systems and the theory is that you want to pick out a partner for reproduction that has a different immune system than your own. Right. 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 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 test. Yeah, they got the show's host and they got these six women at the University of Newcastle, six lookers, to sleep in the same t-shirt two nights straight. They put each of their t-shirts in a jar and, 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 two aside that he found the least pleasing and then the other two, I guess, he could take it or leave it. Yeah. And interestingly enough, it supported the results. The findings, the two that he liked the most shared zero of the same genes, immune system genes as he did. And the two that he did not like shared the most five out of six were the same. Well, so this kind of indicates that 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

of Newcastle. Like you said, they're all lookers, go fighting brown ails. But this whole concept of creating, wanting innately to create more robust offspring that kind of jibes with Richard Dawkins theories. Have you heard of him? No, not the family feud host. Okay. That was Richard Dawson. Right. This is Richard Dawkins. Yeah. And they're often confused. They kind of look alike a little bit. They used to party together in the 70s. 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, us in general, are just kind of these mindless vehicles for genes, that it's really our genes that are interested in survival. And we get our instincts from, you know, our genes, 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 processes that we're supposed to carry out. Right. 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, our humans wired to survive on howstuffworks.com. Don't you agree, Chuck? I hope so. And stick around to find out how you can get $600 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 three or six megapixel camera. But thankfully, we don't need to think about online fraud because for every purchase you make, Visa keeps an eye out for fraud with real time fraud monitoring. And by making sure you're not liable for any unauthorized purchases. How's that for peace of mind? Safe, secure, Visa. Okay. So thanks for sticking around. I don't blame you. I could use $600. Chuck, where's this influx of cash coming from? Josh is coming from your own pocket, dude. How so? Well, it's called the economic stimulus check that everyone received not too long ago from President Bush. And 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 $1,260 million of that $600. Right. So thanks for giving us back our own money. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's kind of a thing. But 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 Down Turn? I would advise anyone interested in the answer to that question to go read it on HowStuffWorks.com. Wouldn't you? I'm going to do it right now. Awesome. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at howstuffworks.com brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? In 1980, cocaine was captivating and corrupting Miami. The cartels, they just killed everybody that was home. Setting an aspiring private investigator on a collision course with corruption and multiple murders. The detective agency would turn out to be a front for our drug pilot. Would claim he did it all for the CIA. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami. I'm walking into the devil's den. Listen to murder in Miami on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1968, five black girls were picked up by police after running away from a reform school in Mount Megs, Alabama. I'm writer and reporter, Josie Duffy Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate the abuse that thousands of black children suffered at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro children and how those five girls changed everything. Listen to unreformed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.