Valid Perception Or Not: Creatures, Human Included, Taller And Bigger Where It's Colder

fradon

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Sep 23, 2017
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chinese are small...way smaller than africans. hakeem olijawan is like 7 foot. i read somewhere that butter and sat fat makes people tall.
 

lvysaur

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cold doesn't select for height (quite the opposite), but it does select for width.
 
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Tarsier

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This might be the sort of thing you are looking for:

Allen's rule - Wikipedia
Allen's rule is an ecogeographical rule formulated by Joel Asaph Allen in 1877, broadly stating that animals adapted to cold climates have shorter limbs and body appendages than animals adapted to warm climates. More specifically, it states that the body volume-to-surface area ratio for homeothermic animals varies inversely with the average temperature of the habitat to which they are adapted (i.e. the ratio is high in cold climates and low in hot climates) due to thermal adaptation.
Bergmann's rule - Wikipedia
Bergmann's rule is an ecogeographical rule that states that within a broadly distributed taxonomic clade, populations and species of larger size are found in colder environments, and species of smaller size are found in warmer regions. Although originally formulated in terms of species within a genus, it has often been recast in terms of populations within a species.

Concerning the difference between human races, I think the last sentence I bolded is important to keep in mind, only switch race for species. Thus East Asians living in warmer climates than Europeans might still have a more 'cold-adapted' body shape than the Euros living in cold temperatures, but just counting East Asians, you would find the that the rule holds for those living in colder, more northerly or higher altitude climates. Consider Tibetans or Mongolians compared to South Chinese or Vietnamese.

It seems to hold broadly for the different human races as well, if we allow for migration to have shaken things up a bit... Africans tend to have shorter torsos and longer limbs comparatively than Caucasians, who tend to have shorter torsos and longer limbs than 'Mongoloid' Asians and Native Americans. Though many Asians and Native Americans today live in warmer climates than Caucasians living in Europe, it seems Caucasians come from a more temperate or subtropical climate (originating in the Mediterranean/Middle East), whereas Asians and Native Americans might have originated or the cold steppes of Eurasia and have higher levels of "Ice Age"/Neanderthal ancestry. This also makes sense in light of the gulf stream and other weather patterns... the western part of Eurasia being milder due the the influence of the Atlantic, Mediterranean basin and Sahara as compared to East Asia with its weather influenced by the steppes of Siberia and the Tibetan plateau, meaning they have a more continental climate even close to the coast.

I don't think summer high temperatures are as likely to influence climate adaptation so much as winter low temperatures, and with that in mind Europe is a very temperate continent despite its high latitude.

All that said, I think your perception is generally true for humans being bigger where it's colder, but not so much taller. Other people have already pointed out that there are very tall people in tropical East Africa and Polynesia... but I imagine they still follow these rules. Polynesians, too, being stockier than Africans is also explainable in that they are of Asian origin, and are seafarers and island dwellers (you get colder much quicker in the water than in the air!) and the long oversea voyages that the ancestors of the Polynesians made must have selected for a body type capable of surviving such voyages, exposed to the elements and deprived of food. I wonder if they are somewhat hypothyroid???

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As to why some populations are simply taller than others, I think diet plays a huge part in that... tall people from Northern Europe, the Dinaric Alps and East Africa, all have a diet high in dairy products and red meat. Haidut made a thread about this: Protein Quality, Not Genes, Determine Male Height. In the 19th century, apparently Plains Indians were the tallest people in the world, with high meat consumption, and Ice Age people were often tall as well.
I think saturated fat as well might be a big part of it (obviously being associated with dairy and meat consumption), though I don't know by what mechanism. This helps to explain Polynesians, as while they don't eat dairy (or didn't at least), they have always eaten alot of seafood and coconut (or for the Maori in New Zealand, seafood and fatty birds).
In itself, having a diet based on meat and milk or fish and coconut doesn't seem to be enough, but also having an adequate calorie consumption too! There are plenty of groups eating diets high in fat and animal protein while remaining short.
 
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