Are humans wired to survive?

Are humans born with survival instincts? Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about human instincts and survival.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:20):
and resolves online fraud safe secure Visa. Hey, you welcome
to the podcast. Josh Clark here with Chuck Bryant, Paara
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

(00:42):
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

(01:07):
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

(01:28):
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.

(01:52):
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

(02:14):
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

(02:35):
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

(02:58):
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.

(03:20):
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

(03:43):
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.

(04:04):
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

(04:26):
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,

(04:47):
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,

(05:07):
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

(05:30):
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.

(05:53):
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

(06:14):
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

(06:35):
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

(06:56):
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,

(07:17):
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

(07:37):
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

(08:00):
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

(08:22):
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

(08:43):
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

(09:06):
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

(09:27):
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

(09:48):
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

(10:11):
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

(10:33):
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

(10:54):
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

(11:15):
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
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(11:37):
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(11:59):
secure Visa? Okay, so thanks for sticking around. I don't
blame you. I could use six hundred dollars, Chuck Wards,
is 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 Husident Bush and uh. I had a hard time

(12:21):
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

(12:42):
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.
I'm gonna do it right now. Awesome moral, this and
thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com.

(13:04):
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