They call it stupid hot for a reason: Heat muddles animal brains

As temperatures rise, some creatures pick fights while others struggle to learn.

See full article...

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Yes, we adapt to heat, and those are among the ways we do it, but not the only ones.

In the '80s I worked with a Somalian girl and I remember noticing how when hot May weather had Irish people staggering around in their shirts gasping for air and babbling about the excessive heat (it would probably have been all of 28C) she would still be wearing her woolly jumper. It's not genetic - or not much - lots of people from Africa wear similar amounts of clothing at the same temperature as the Irish. She was just used to heat. [Granted she was tall and thin, which is arguably adaptational - but tall thin people exist in every climate.]

None of this negates the results of the study, nor do they establish your claim, without any study of your own, that heat does NOT muddle thinking.

 

[Lunakki]

I couldn’t tell from the article if in hot weather they became equally scared of both items, or just became equally less scared of both the genet and the box.

I looked at the research paper so you don’t have to, and it appears to be the latter. Due to the heat, they became less reactive to both items.

The authors speculate that vigilance and reacting also has an energetic cost, which is more difficult to sustain in hot weather. So it might be that, or the impact on the brain from the heat, or a combination of both.

Thanks for this! I was wondering that myself, so you saved me some trouble.

 

[Chinsukolo]

Are there there plans to further research Florida Man?

They are already, they are doing it Insitu while he's in office...

Yes that vague on purpose, because sadly there is more then one study subject in the wild and in office

 

[llanitedave]

From the article: "If the animals can’t stay alert enough to find food or avoid predators, their chances of survival go downhill,..."

Maybe it will even out, as their own prey and their predators also become stupider.

 

[llanitedave]

I don't like how your post (and others in this thread) also implies that people in countries closer to the equator, who are predominantly black and brown, are stupider than people in countries towards the poles, who are predominately white. Or are you intentionally saying things like, for example, Somalians are stupider than British?

Ironically, your high intelligence has failed to recognized that the equatorial regions actually tend to be milder than the temperate regions, since they lack the significant day/night duration differences that go with seasonality. Summers in the temperate zones get hotter because they spend more time under direct sunlight and less time in the dark, whereas equatorial regions remain at evenly distributed day/night durations.

 

[llanitedave]

I 100% relate to this. When it’s too hot for me I can’t even do 1+1. My brains just freezes, of all things.

There's an old legend of a time way back when there was a heat wave on the plains. It got so hot that corn on the stalk in the fields began to pop. All the white fluffy popped corn coated the ground around the fields and pastures, the local cattle thought it was snow and many of them froze to death.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

None of this negates the results of the study, nor do they establish your claim, without any study of your own, that heat does NOT muddle thinking.

It doesn't negate the idea that there are statistically visible results of unusually hot - and presumably also unusually cold - weather, though I'd say discomfort rather than malfunctioning brains is more likely to be the cause.

It does make an argument against the notion of another unique terrible effect piled up on a bunch of other unique terrible effects. And I see nobody is writing articles about how cold waves make animals sluggish - won't global warming make that better? (Worse if the animal in question is your predator, of course.) It's reminiscent of how some study suggests fungus grows better in the heat and everyone goes off on some Last Of Us scenario without once observing that people walk around in the tropics every day without turning into big balls of fungus.

[By the way, I recalled this morning on waking that the girl I mentioned was Ethiopian, not Somali, but it was too late to edit.]

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

Ironically, your high intelligence has failed to recognized that the equatorial regions actually tend to be milder than the temperate regions, since they lack the significant day/night duration differences that go with seasonality. Summers in the temperate zones get hotter because they spend more time under direct sunlight and less time in the dark, whereas equatorial regions remain at evenly distributed day/night durations.

Torrid and frigid zones misnamed? [Edit: and of course temperate] I think not.

You forget that even if the days are shorter in the tropical summer, the sun is more directly overhead.

 

[yopmaster]

I can't wait to see this study linked by racist accounts on social medias.

 

[Digitalclips]

Temperatures quoted without humidity levels fail to account for various creatures responses. Having walked in the deserts and jungles on the Equator in South America, live in both Florida and New Hampshire, and grew up in UK, I can attest to the fact that the temperature alone does not define how our bodies react. Of course I understand why, but it seems many don't.

 

[Rival Vector Plot]

A common misconception. It's actually caused by the nauseatingly high volume of sugar in the five gallons of sweet tea they drink each day.

Do they have any teeth left? Is this how it’s served regionally?

 

[jdietz]

There is some research on this. I am not familiar with it. I found this paper from a search.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9616493/ Globally unequal effect of extreme heat on economic growth (published by NBER)
https://www.nber.org/papers/w21119 Goldilocks Economies? Temperature Stress and the Direct Impacts of Climate Change (published by NBER)

I remember seeing that most economic activity on Earth is in the temperate zone, but I don't have the source, and this is more of a hypothesis than a theory because there are counterexamples that aren't explained (although it seems to be mostly true).

 

[numerobis]

There is some research on this. I am not familiar with it. I found this paper from a search.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9616493/ Globally unequal effect of extreme heat on economic growth (published by NBER)
https://www.nber.org/papers/w21119 Goldilocks Economies? Temperature Stress and the Direct Impacts of Climate Change (published by NBER)

I remember seeing that most economic activity on Earth is in the temperate zone, but I don't have the source, and this is more of a hypothesis than a theory because there are counterexamples that aren't explained (although it seems to be mostly true).

It’s pretty hard to have a lot of economic activity when you’re limited to the banks of the Nile and a couple coastal regions.

 

[TekaroBB]

A common misconception. It's actually caused by the nauseatingly high volume of sugar in the five gallons of sweet tea they drink each day.

Say what you will about the southern end of the US (and I have a lot of unkind things to say), I do appreciate that they distinguish between Iced Tea (served plain) and Sweet Tea. As opposed to the North and Canada where all iced tea is assumed to be at least a little sweetened.

As a black tea and coffee drinker, I do appreciate how common the unsweetened stuff is when I travel there.

 

[THT]

Is this why most Americans in the south are so stupid? It might also explain why most of the people in Queensland, AU are also stupid.

There is a hypothesis for why the USA southeast is at the bottom of basically all quality of life metrics in the USA because of bad climate: hurricanes, tornados, heat and humidity. Catastrophic weather events destroy infrastructure more often than other geographies, resulting in the area constantly trying to catch back up. Life expectancy from East Texas to the Carolinas is almost 10 years lower than the Northeast, Midwest or West coast because of it.

I don't really don't think the evidence is showing that, or the studies have to show why it isn't the case in other places that hotter, more humid, and also has hurricanes. Places like South Asia or Southeast Asia are looking fine as far as life expectancy goes. Saudi Arabia, a hyper hot climate theocratic state has better health outcomes than the USA Southeast. It's not the hurricanes as Florida has better health outcomes than Louisiana to the Carolinas.

I blame it on coal, cotton, corn and Christianity (baptist evangelicals). There is something in this melange of history and culture that is driving poor health outcomes in the Southeast. I have to wonder if all the pesticides, all the coal mining pollution, all the corn fertilizers, are draining down the Mississippi river basin. That may have a population wide effect on life expectancy. New Orleans may in fact be a victim of hurricanes, but it is on the butt end of all the stuff happening upstream.

The legacy of coal mining in the Appalachians is clearly seen in lower life expectancy from Tennessee to West Virginia. The slavery belt can literally be seen in voting and crime trends by county. This legacy affects both sides. And, there is something about the religious culture that prevents the whole thing from improving. Latinos and Asians have better health outcomes living in the same geography. That may be clue there too.

 

[emuc64]

Note: the proper way to drink sweet tea is about a 1:10 ratio in my not-so humble, non-Southern Floridian brain. Ask any Southerner: only north Florida is part of the South. In my Floridian opinion more than 1:10 ratio is icky!

Please elaborate. Is the 1:10, sugar to tea-water ratio? If so, do you account for ice by making it a stronger concentration?

 

[llanitedave]

Torrid and frigid zones misnamed? [Edit: and of course temperate] I think not.

You forget that even if the days are shorter in the tropical summer, the sun is more directly overhead.

Only at noon. The sun always spends most of it's time at an angle from the vertical. And in the temperate zone in the summer, the sun spends more time at a high angle.

 

[llanitedave]

Temperatures quoted without humidity levels fail to account for various creatures responses. Having walked in the deserts and jungles on the Equator in South America, live in both Florida and New Hampshire, and grew up in UK, I can attest to the fact that the temperature alone does not define how our bodies react. Of course I understand why, but it seems many don't.

That's true, but humidity is so variable across landscapes that it's hard to form generalizations. The grassy plains of equatorial east Africa, where humanity evolved, has low humidities, which is why sweat cooling and hairless skin is so effective there. The temperate Deep South of the United States suffers both sweltering heat and debilitating humidity at the same time. The Southwestern Deserts can be even hotter, but as they say, it's a dry heat, and that does make a notable difference.

 

[emuc64]

When it's hot, isn't a net loss in cognitive ability for both predator and prey? It takes longer for a predator to figure out how to get food that's hiding (see babbler above). It's the same for the prey, to be able to recognize harm (see babbler again). So, no one species is at an advantage in the wild?

 

[llanitedave]

There is some research on this. I am not familiar with it. I found this paper from a search.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9616493/ Globally unequal effect of extreme heat on economic growth (published by NBER)
https://www.nber.org/papers/w21119 Goldilocks Economies? Temperature Stress and the Direct Impacts of Climate Change (published by NBER)

I remember seeing that most economic activity on Earth is in the temperate zone, but I don't have the source, and this is more of a hypothesis than a theory because there are counterexamples that aren't explained (although it seems to be mostly true).

Most of the Earth's landmass is in the temperate zone. That's all the explanation you need.

 

[solarbonite]

Please elaborate. Is the 1:10, sugar to tea-water ratio? If so, do you account for ice by making it a stronger concentration?

Oh it's 1 part sweet tea:10 parts unsweet tea.

As far as the ratio of sugar: no idea. Typically you heat the tea and add sugar till it almost stops dissolving, and then cool it.

 

[TekaroBB]

Oh it's 1 part sweet tea:10 parts unsweet tea.

As far as the ratio of sugar: no idea. Typically you heat the tea and add sugar till it almost stops dissolving, and then cool it.

Wait, I'm confused. Are you making let's say 11 parts of unsweetened tea, then separating out 1 part to boil saturated sugar into (essentially creating a tea-syrup), then remixing the sweetened tea back into the other remaining 10 parts? Would it not be easier to just make one batch and boil the correct amount of sugar into it?

 

[solarbonite]

Wait, I'm confused. Are you making let's say 11 parts of unsweetened tea, then separating out 1 part to boil saturated sugar into (essentially creating a tea-syrup), then remixing the sweetened tea back into the other remaining 10 parts? Would it not be easier to just make one batch and boil the correct amount of sugar into it?

Yup.

But (overgeneralizing here) everyone in Florida just buys Sweet Tea/Unsweet Tea from Publix.
Way less effort to do than making it yourself for parties.

Even folks that typically shop elsewhere will usually get the gallons/half-gallons from Publix for a party.

 

[lp0_on_fire]

My dog loses all sense of depth perception when it is hot while having an incomprehensible desire to simultaneously run really fast.

This usually manifests in failing to recognize that the floating dock is on dry land and skidding out on the gravel rather than leaping into the water.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

Only at noon. The sun always spends most of it's time at an angle from the vertical. And in the temperate zone in the summer, the sun spends more time at a high angle.

Here's a graph of global mean daily temperature by month, year round: https://openclimatemap.org/

Australia punches above its weight for a high latitude country, but I think it's obvious that the highest monthly temperatures are mostly found in the tropics. Not just the highest year round average.

The angle is quite a bit higher for much of the day. Outside the tropics the sun is never directly overhead.

 

[AusPeter]

Here's a graph of global mean daily temperature by month, year round: https://openclimatemap.org/

Australia punches above its weight for a high latitude country, but I think it's obvious that the highest monthly temperatures are mostly found in the tropics. Not just the highest year round average.

The angle is quite a bit higher for much of the day. Outside the tropics the sun is never directly overhead.

Australia seems to have the same range of temperatures as the same latitudes in Africa and South America

 

[llanitedave]

Here's a graph of global mean daily temperature by month, year round: https://openclimatemap.org/

Australia punches above its weight for a high latitude country, but I think it's obvious that the highest monthly temperatures are mostly found in the tropics. Not just the highest year round average.

The angle is quite a bit higher for much of the day. Outside the tropics the sun is never directly overhead.

That's a nice map, and it really is illustrative. One thing I miss on it is a latitude scale. The first thing I notice is that the actual equatorial temperatures do stay pretty mild all year long. They never rise to the extremes seen either in the far tropics or the lower temperate zones. Maybe I'm jaded from living in the desert, but I'd hardly call temperatures in the upper 70s to low 90s F "torrid." Looking at July temperatures in the northern hemisphere, where the highest temperatures occur is in the desert regions of the Sahara, the Arabian and Indian deserts, and even further north in the U.S. Southwest. In fact, the highest temperatures of all, in Iraq just north of the Persian Gulf, occur at a latitude of near 31º N, well above the Tropic of Cancer. In the Southern hemisphere, in December and January, the highest temperatures occur in the Sahel region of Africa, which interestingly enough is north of the equator, and in far western Australia, which is near the southern limit of the Tropic of Capricorn.

The lesson here, I think, is that sun angle is probably just a secondary influence on temperature. Cloud cover, humidity, and air currents from the oceans or the near-polar regions play a greater role as long as the latitudes are not too extreme. But in general, except in a few regions, I don't see much concern about temperatures frying the brain, and where they do occur, it's generally not at the equator.

The highest temperatures ever recorded on Earth occurred at Death Valley, Latitude 36.4º N, Kuwait, 29.5º N, and in British Palestine in 1942, at roughly 32º N. None of these are in the tropics.

 

[countbalo]

I handle heat extremely poorly, always have; I can't think straight, I can't focus even the little I normally can and I'm pissed as a bear that got shot in the bum. I basically just completely shut down every summer until my husband and I moved to our current home and got an AC. 23°C is already too much for me.

I assume my inability to deal with heat stems from autism, but I can't say for certain.

I'm the same (i grew up in Oklahoma) and those 100 degree days were killers. I do like the cold though. Now my dad is the opposite. If it gets below 70 he's complaining about the cold. If it's above 90 he wants to go outside and do things. I swear he wanted to kill me as kid in the summer.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

That's a nice map, and it really is illustrative. One thing I miss on it is a latitude scale. The first thing I notice is that the actual equatorial temperatures do stay pretty mild all year long. They never rise to the extremes seen either in the far tropics or the lower temperate zones. Maybe I'm jaded from living in the desert, but I'd hardly call temperatures in the upper 70s to low 90s F "torrid." Looking at July temperatures in the northern hemisphere, where the highest temperatures occur is in the desert regions of the Sahara, the Arabian and Indian deserts, and even further north in the U.S. Southwest. In fact, the highest temperatures of all, in Iraq just north of the Persian Gulf, occur at a latitude of near 31º N, well above the Tropic of Cancer. In the Southern hemisphere, in December and January, the highest temperatures occur in the Sahel region of Africa, which interestingly enough is north of the equator, and in far western Australia, which is near the southern limit of the Tropic of Capricorn.

The lesson here, I think, is that sun angle is probably just a secondary influence on temperature. Cloud cover, humidity, and air currents from the oceans or the near-polar regions play a greater role as long as the latitudes are not too extreme. But in general, except in a few regions, I don't see much concern about temperatures frying the brain, and where they do occur, it's generally not at the equator.

The highest temperatures ever recorded on Earth occurred at Death Valley, Latitude 36.4º N, Kuwait, 29.5º N, and in British Palestine in 1942, at roughly 32º N. None of these are in the tropics.

Well, we agree on where it is hot, anyway! Still, I think it's inarguable that the highest temperatures - are mostly found in tropical and sub-tropical regions, rather than those we think of as temperate - so I would say the sun angle mostly trumps the longer days!

I suppose it's actually a good thing that the map doesn't have latitude, in that while it is highly relevant to the debate we are having (affecting sun angle and day length equally) it is clearly just one of many factors affecting temperature, albeit the most salient on a completely global scale - so it's better not to have it emphasised.

 

[Thomnmi]

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The Japanese don't care to, the Chinese wouldn't dare to,
Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one,
But Englishmen detest a siesta,
In the Philippines there are lovely screens,
to protect you from the glare,
In the Malay states there are hats like plates,
which the Britishers won't wear,
At twelve noon the natives swoon, and
no further work is done -
But Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

 

[real mikeb_60]

Please elaborate. Is the 1:10, sugar to tea-water ratio? If so, do you account for ice by making it a stronger concentration?

I prefer adding sweetener (in limited amount, often as part of lemonade), to taste, to my unsweetened tea, rather than trying to dilute something that's already 1/2 corn sweetener to a drinkable concentration. The titration just seems to work a little better than way.

Glad to see that northern AU is correctly compared to southern US for climate purposes (in other comments). But as also noted, FL becomes more "southern" as you go north; in my couple of trips there, it seemed that Miami was hardly even part of the US (many more New Yorkers, Canadians, and Cubans than farther north, granted, in winter-spring visits). And even in the 1980s there was an active tech scene in Miami. So perhaps some kind of nuance is needed even if at first glance it looks like a strong correlation between The South (or The North in AU) and the "hot brain" theory.

 

[real mikeb_60]

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The Japanese don't care to, the Chinese wouldn't dare to,
Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one,
But Englishmen detest a siesta,
In the Philippines there are lovely screens,
to protect you from the glare,
In the Malay states there are hats like plates,
which the Britishers won't wear,
At twelve noon the natives swoon, and
no further work is done -
But Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

Thank you! All I remembered about that one was the first line.

Though: the climate here in inland CA (essentially semi- to real deserts) usually peaks out in the late afternoon to about sunset. Best time for a siesta, really, is between about 3-6 PM. I kind of like having a late dinner in the summer, say around 8 PM - isn't that a thing in Spain and Argentina, too?