Ambphibian ancestors gave us hiccups
Neil Shubin's new book, Your Inner Fish, traces the evolutionary history of the human body's many quirks, including the origin of the hiccup:
My kid's got persistent hiccups (they started in the womb) and while they don't seem to bother her, they take some getting used to for visitors. Now I can just explain that she's getting in touch with her inner amphibian. Link, Link to Your Inner Fish on Amazon (via Collision Detection)Or consider hiccups. Spasms in our diaphragms, hiccups are triggered by electric signals generated in the brain stem. Amphibian brain stems emit similar signals, which control the regular motion of their gills. Our brain stems, inherited from amphibian ancestors, still spurt out odd signals producing hiccups that are, according to Shubin, essentially the same phenomenon as gill breathing. Similarly, modern lifestyles leave us vulnerable to predispositions to obesity, heart attacks and haemorrhoids because we have the genes of hunter-gatherers who lived active, not sedentary, lives.
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I'm halfway through this book right now and can't seem to put it down. Highly recommended. Shubin blends the right amount of autobiography with straight-up science with clever metaphor to keep the book engaging whatever your scientific background.
It also has numerous clear, straightforward, and easy-to-remember examples of the strong evidence we have for Darwinian evolution... in case you ever find yourself in need of a quick trump card while debating proponents of "ID".
Posey had hiccups in the womb? They must have taken some getting used to for her mother too!
Evidently this happens with many newborns. You have probably already researched a list of foods for mother to avoid if the hiccups seem problematic:
dairy milk and products
Caffeine
Soy products
Peanuts
Shellfish
Chocolate
Citrus
Wheat
Eggs
Yikes! Luckily that leaves alcohol, meat, goat's milk and real feta. :+
I chuckled a bit, thinking of the possibility that you might nickname Posey "Happy Little Mutant"
It would be a great thing to bring out, when you need to embarrass her in front of her friends in 13+ years. (how else do you keep them humble?)
The best cure for hiccups is a spoonful of sugar. This folk remedy (which I've never known to fail) was validated a few years back by a scientist who was provoked enough to run a study of it.
It makes sense. I always thought stretching your gills, or for you ordinary humans out there, pulling back on your neck just behind the ears, helped to stop hiccups.
In furthering our evolution, here is offered the quickest hiccup cure: Hold your breath & lean forward in a doorway (holding the jamb for support) for 15 seconds.
Holding my breath for 30 seconds to 1 minute works for me every time.
May be a small clue to lead a more active life.
" *hic* Kill me. *hic* Kill me. *hic* Kill me." (/simpsons)
Looks like a fascinating book, kinda picking up where Gould left off it would seem. And a lemon wedge sprinkled with sugar and bitters always works for me.
A good interview with Shubin is here:
http://www.brainwaveweb.com/diavlogs/8008
Shubin made a decent appearance on the Colbert Show:
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2008/01/your_inner_fish.html
I think he's wrong about prenatal hiccups. I think they have a real, important function. (These ideas are based on a letter to the editor I saw in Nature more than a decade ago.)
Hiccups are much more common and more frequent prenatally than they are in children, and more common in children than in adults. So we wonder, might post-natal hiccups just be "leftovers" of pre-natal hiccups, which are the important ones?
What might pre-natal hiccups be for? When a baby is born, it's absolutely crucial that they be able to take that first breath and keep breathing -- even though they've never breathed before. They have to have the reflex to keep breathing, but they also have to have the muscles developed and strengthened to respond to the reflex.
Hiccups work the breathing muscles without actually inhaling (which for a baby in the womb would mean "drowning"). You can feel how much of a hiccup is from the diaphragm, and how much that muscle and the rib muscles hurt after a long bout. That's what hiccups are really for -- exercising those muscles before you're born, so they can do their job first time, every time afterwards.