Why do allergies exist, and what evolutionary purpose, if any, do they serve?
In: Biology
In nature allergies would be a death sentence.
Evolutionarily, it would be the end of the line: either the allergy would kill the allergic or the allergy would hinder movement and reflex so a predator could kill the allergic.
Humans find value in people (and pets) beyond their mere presence among us and we talk and listen to and find trust and love in each other.
It is only through our will to care for each other and to protect ourselves and our relations against harm that humans have survived with allergies.
The evolutionary purpose is that its good if your body and immune system rapidly react to a dangerous/hostile invasion.
Allergies exist because your body and immune system are chemical in nature and sometimes trigger that response against a harmless substance…. or even your own body/tissues/cells.
My immediate thought is poison ivy. For all intents and purposes, the rash from a plant like that, or similar plants like pokeweed or poison oak, etc. is an allergic reaction and symbolizes they hey, do NOT eat this.
I’d say allergies are to keep us from things that are harmful to us.
From a strictly materialistic point of view, it is a mistake to assign purpose to random mutations. On this view, whatever process of random mutations led to allergies served no specific purpose.
Allergies are mistakes by our immune system. it mistakenly recognizes a harmless substance as dangerous and overreacts in an attempt to destroy it, causing collateral harm or discomfort to the body in the process.
We don’t really understand a lot of how allergies form or what determines which we acquire, though there does seem to be some common cases ingrained into us, like the urushiol from poison ivy, that most humans have an allergy to. We know less about why, say, shellfish or peanut allergies show up and why they differ in different populations. Its also theorized as parasites that normally suppress the immune system are becoming rarer and we are becoming “cleaner” that the immune system isn’t used to it and is looking for boogeymen where there are none.
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