Why do we need the ANS?

Let us imagine for a moment that, during a camping trip, you were suddenly confronted by a large angry grizzly bear. In this situation, you would need to marshal instantaneously all your physical and mental capabilities in order to either place the maximum distance between yourself and the animal (flight); or perhaps most unwisely to engage in a fight. In either case, some or all of the following rapid automatic adjustments would most probably take place: The pupils of the eyes would dilate to maximize peripheral vision. The lenses of the eyes would adjust for far vision. Airways in the lungs would open up wide. Respiratory rate would increase. Heart rate would increase. Blood vessels to limb muscles would dilate. Blood vessels to visceral organs would constrict. Salivary secretion, and secretory activity in the digestive system, would be greatly reduced. Brain activity, and general state of alertness, would be greatly enhanced. All these coordinated changes would be largely brought into play via the so-called sympathetic division of the ANS: a sequence of events that is sometimes referred to as the "fight or flight" response. In fact, under the circumstances you might even be frightened enough to have an uncontrollable bowel movement (defecation). Such a response to an emergency, although highly embarrassing, may prove advantageous to an animal, since the fright-induced automatic emptying of the bowels reduces the animal's weight and thus tends to reduce the energy expenditure during a potential flight maneuver: We might thus extend our characterization of the overall complex sympathetic emergency adjustment, by calling it a "fight, flight and fright" (3-F) response. If the bear now, for whatever reason, decided to retreat into the bushes, you would undoubtedly "heave a sigh of relief" (automatic readjustment of breathing pattern). In addition, the body's overall emergency response would begin to shut down, just as automatically as it had been turned on in the first place. This would be accomplished by two simultaneous processes: (a) an abatement of the original sympathetic effort; and, perhaps more importantly, (b) the initiation of an antagonistic neural response pattern by the parasympathetic division of the ANS, aimed specifically at accelerating the shut-down of the 3-F emergency state: The pupils of the eyes would constrict. The lenses would readjust for closer viewing. Airways of the lungs would constrict. Respiratory rate would decrease to normal resting level. Heart rate would decrease to resting level. Blood vessels to limb muscles would constrict. Blood vessels to visceral organs would dilate. Salivary secretion, and secretory activity in the digestive system, would return to normal resting levels Brain activity and the state of alertness would return to normal levels. From this example, it can be seen that the ANS plays a vital role in the preservation of the individual organism. While the somatic nervous system is largely concerned with conscious, deliberate, "voluntary" interactions with events in the external world, the ANS protects the individual against extraordinary life- threatening situations by releasing built-in (stereotyped) patterns of response that have been acquired, and whose effectiveness has been fine-tuned, by millions of years of evolutionary development.