Evolving Culture: Where Do We Go From Here? : NPR
“What we are able to do which other animals aren’t able to do is to rapidly adapt to completely new environments,” says Robert Boyd, an anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Most animals — all animals except humans — would have to adapt to that by changing genetically.”
Humans Adapt With Their Wits
Think about it. Let’s say you want to live in Fairbanks, Alaska. If you’re a musk ox, you can’t build a shelter or buy insulations, so you make your own.
“They have a very, very superfine sort of wool that’s underneath a long skirt of hair,” says biologist Perry Barboza, director of the Large Animal Research Station, a part of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “That provides an enormous amount of insulation. And on top of that, or beneath that, they have about 2 inches fat as well.”
But musk ox can only survive in one kind of environment. Transport them to the desert, and they die within days because they don’t have the physiology to get rid of excess heat.