Bergmann's rule is a "just-so" story of human body size

Carl Bergmann was an astute naturalist and physiologist. His ideas about animal size and shape were important advances in the pre-Darwinian nineteenth century. Bergmann's rule claims that that in cold climates, large body mass increases the ratio of volume-to-surface area and provides for maxim...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of physiological anthropology Vol. 41; no. 1; pp. 15 - 13
Main Authors Bogin, Barry, Hermanussen, Michael, Scheffler, Christiane
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England BioMed Central 12.04.2022
BMC
Subjects
Animals
Anthropology
Biology
Birds
Body mass
Body shape
Body Size
Body Temperature Regulation
Developmental plasticity
Heat
Heat loss
Humans
Hypotheses
Mammals
Medical research
Models, Biological
Physiology
Review
SEPE
Skin
Surface area
Temperature
Body shape
SEPE
Body size
Developmental plasticity
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Summary:Carl Bergmann was an astute naturalist and physiologist. His ideas about animal size and shape were important advances in the pre-Darwinian nineteenth century. Bergmann's rule claims that that in cold climates, large body mass increases the ratio of volume-to-surface area and provides for maximum metabolic heat retention in mammals and birds. Conversely, in warmer temperatures, smaller body mass increases surface area relative to volume and allows for greater heat loss. For humans, we now know that body size and shape are regulated more by social-economic-political-emotional (SEPE) factors as well as nutrition-infection interactions. Temperature has virtually no effect. Bergmann's rule is a "just-so" story and should be relegated to teaching and scholarship about the history of science. That "rule" is no longer acceptable science and has nothing to tell us about physiological anthropology.
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ISSN:1880-6805
1880-6791
1880-6805
DOI:10.1186/s40101-022-00287-z