Beginning in the mid-1930s the comparative physiologists Laurence Irvingand Per Fredrik (Pete) Scholander pioneered the study of diving mammals,particularly harbor seals. Although resting on earlier work dating back to the latenineteenth century, their research was distinctive in several ways. In contrast tomedically oriented physiology, the approaches of Irving and Scholander were stronglyinfluenced by natural history, zoology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Divingmammals, they argued, shared the cardiopulmonary physiology of terrestrial mammals,but evolution had modified these basic adaptive processes in extreme ways. Inparticular, seals’ remarkable ability to hold breath, lower metabolism, produceenergy anaerobically, and resist asphyxiation, provided a sharp contrast withterrestrial mammals, including humans. This diving physiology was an extremeelaboration of a general regulatory mechanism that allowed seals and other divingmammals to remain active underwater for extended periods. The decrease in heart ratereferred to as bradycardia or the “diving reflex” was highly developed in divingmammals, but also found in less developed form in many other organisms faced byasphyxia. It therefore served as a kind of “master switch” for lowering metabolismin diving, hibernation, parturition, drowning, and other physiological responsesinvolving lack of oxygen. Studying bradycardia unified a wide diversity ofphysiological phenomena, while also providing a context for contrasting thephysiological responses of various species, including humans. Conducted in thelaboratory and the field, this research served as a bridge between a comparativephysiological ecology focused on non-human species and a human-centered generalphysiology.
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