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Re: Some Notes on Evolution

Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2019 4:13 pm
by LanDroid
DB Roy wrote:If you get hiccups while playing one of the members of the violin family, that can ruin a recital.
I'm sure it would be much worse if you're playing a wind instrument! Although hiccups might make smooth jazz saxophonists a little more interesting.
:bananadance:

Re: Some Notes on Evolution

Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2019 10:14 pm
by DB Roy
Litwitlou wrote: From what I understand all life evolved from single cell organisms. To pick fish, from the vast array of life forms in the millions of years before the existence of hominids as the reason for hiccups, is far-fetched. Yes, hiccups can ruin a recital but so can a psychopath with an AR15. From what life form did we inherit sociopathy? There is no particular reason we should have sociopaths. They serve no purpose.

Hiccups are an overwhelmingly innocuous side effect of the evolution of our digestive and respiratory systems. Fish need not enter the equation as per Occam's Razor. I read your explanation of the fish/hiccups theory and remain spectacularly unconvinced.
As I stated, these are NOT my ideas. Take it up with Neil Shubin.
I am very curious to know where you found the information on which you based that theory.

https://www.livescience.com/33688-hiccup-purpose.html

Why Do We Hiccup?
By John B. Snow January 27, 2012 Health

It’s safe to say you don’t remember your first hiccup, since it probably occurred before you were born. It is typical for developing human fetuses to have hiccups in the womb, and yet even though we experience them throughout our lifetimes, the cause of these involuntary actions has defied explanation.

To unravel the mystery of why we hiccup — which serve no obvious useful purpose — scientists are looking into our evolutionary past for clues among our distant relatives. One promising candidate: amphibians, in particular tadpoles.

The mechanics of what happens during a hiccup have fueled this theory. A hiccup, known in medical circles as a singultus, includes a sharp contraction of the muscles used for inhalation — the diaphragm, muscles in the chest wall and neck among others. This is counteracted, at the same time, by the inhibition of muscles used during exhalation.

Here, the back of the tongue and roof of the mouth move upward, followed by the clamping shut of the vocal chords, aka the glottis. This last bit, the closing of the glottis, is the source of the eponymous “hic” sound. And, as you no doubt know from first-hand experience, this process doesn’t just happen once but repeats in a rhythmic fashion.

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Tadpoles seem to exhibit a similar physiological behavior.

“Halfway through its development a tadpole has both lungs that breathe air and gills for breathing water,” William A. Whitelaw, a professor at the University of Calgary, wrote in Scientific American. “To breathe water, it fills its mouth with water and then closes the glottis and forces the water out through the gills.” This hiccup-like action is seen in many primitive air-breathers, such as gar, lungfish and other amphibians that have gills.

Another clue linking hiccups in humans to these creatures is the electrical origin of the hiccup trigger in our brain, according to Neil Shubin, a professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago. As related by the Guardian: “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.”

If hiccups are a remnant of the genetic code passed down by our amphibian ancestors, can it be true that they perform no beneficial function in humans, despite persisting for the last 370 million years since our ancestors first stepped onto dry land?

Christian Straus, a scientist at Pitie-Saltpetriere Hospital in Paris, has put forth a theory that hiccupping might be a mechanism that helps mammals learn to suck, which involves a series of similar movements. While plausible, this theory will be difficult to prove, Allen Pack, an expert in neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania, told the BBC.

Until Straus and his colleagues can demonstrate a correlation between the areas of the brain that control suckling and those that trigger hiccups, the purpose of the mysterious singultus will remain just that — a mystery.

Re: Some Notes on Evolution

Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:35 pm
by geo
If hiccups are a remnant of the genetic code passed down by our amphibian ancestors, can it be true that they perform no beneficial function in humans, despite persisting for the last 370 million years since our ancestors first stepped onto dry land?
This is very interesting and it sounds plausible, but remains one of several possible explanations. Here's another one:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3504071/

Excerpt:
Rather than continuing as a vestigial reflex whose purpose has evolved away, I propose that the hiccup may be a surprisingly complex reflex to remove air from the stomachs of young suckling mammals.
"Complex" being the key word. If there's one overriding consistency in science, it is that things always end up being more complex than we first supposed!

So there's no need to take it up with Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, since there is no consensus about why we hiccup, no dogma to overturn. Only many mysteries to explore!

Re: Some Notes on Evolution

Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2019 8:02 am
by Litwitlou
DB Roy wrote: As I stated, these are NOT my ideas. Take it up with Neil Shubin.
Neil Shubin didn't post that here. I know evolution is a fact. The point is we need to interject some common sense here. We hiccup because of something we inherited from fish? Stop it. Just because someone's put that crap in a book backed by a theory that makes little sense and can't be proven doesn't mean anyone needs to take it seriously.

Re: Some Notes on Evolution

Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2019 7:14 pm
by DB Roy
I'm only going to respond to the hiccup thing one more time and then I am done. I need to move on with other ideas and processes of evolution.

Another thing that links hiccupping to the fish ancestor is that fetuses in the womb hiccup very frequently. So much so, that if a pregnant woman does not feel her fetus hiccupping virtually everyday, doctors would be concerned about its viability. Fetuses begin to hiccup at the earliest at around 8 weeks. That is the stage at which the ears begin to form. The inner ear cannot form if the fetus does not start losing its gill slits because those slits repurpose themselves into the bones of the inner ear. So as the slits begin transforming, the baby can, of course, no longer breathe through those slits. And at that same time, the baby starts to hiccup. It's trying to breathe through gills it doesn't have anymore.

While it still has gill slits, the fetus swallows the most disgusting crap you can think of--amniotic fluid, for example. You know what amniotic fluid is? Urine. Fetal urine. The fetus drinks the fluid, which is originally water taken in from the mother's body through the placenta. It drinks it, pisses it out, drinks it, pisses it out, etc. Ultrasounds will show the fetus's belly greatly distended because its full of this fluid.
It's also breathing it through its gill slits. Doesn't seem to bother it. Only at 8 weeks does it start to hiccup when its gill slits start disappearing.

As for the possibility of the fetus using the reflex to prepare for suckling, who says that too wasn't repurposed from the original reason for hiccupping?

Re: Some Notes on Evolution

Posted: Sat Sep 07, 2019 10:31 am
by geo
Litwitlou wrote:
DB Roy wrote: As I stated, these are NOT my ideas. Take it up with Neil Shubin.
Neil Shubin didn't post that here. I know evolution is a fact. The point is we need to interject some common sense here. We hiccup because of something we inherited from fish? Stop it. Just because someone's put that crap in a book backed by a theory that makes little sense and can't be proven doesn't mean anyone needs to take it seriously.
There's no question that life started in the oceans. As Dawkins has said—not facetiously—our "185 Millionth Great Grandfather" was a fish. As DB Roy mentions, look at the gills on a developing fetus. It really isn't much of a stretch to suppose that hiccups are a vestigial holdover from our aquatic heritage, and quite possibly repurposed during mammalian evolution. I'm not sure what all the hubbub is all about. Yes, it's still theoretical, but quite plausible. There are all kinds of vestigial artifacts in our evolutionary history. For example, that men are far more likely to develop inguinal hernias is something inherited from fish.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-13278255

Re: Some Notes on Evolution

Posted: Sat Sep 07, 2019 10:51 am
by DB Roy
geo wrote: There's no question that life started in the oceans. As Dawkins has said—not facetiously—our "185 Millionth Great Grandfather" was a fish. As DB Roy mentions, look at the gills on a developing fetus. It really isn't much of a stretch to suppose that hiccups are a vestigial holdover from our aquatic heritage, and quite possibly repurposed during mammalian evolution. I'm not sure what all the hubbub is all about. Yes, it's still theoretical, but quite plausible. There are all kinds of vestigial artifacts in our evolutionary history. For example, that men are far more likely to develop inguinal hernias is something inherited from fish.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-13278255
I wonder what our innate fishness might have to do with the fact that male bodies float in water face down and female bodies float in water face up.

Re: Some Notes on Evolution

Posted: Sat Sep 07, 2019 11:08 am
by Harry Marks
Do fish get inguinal hernias from heavy lifting?

Re: Some Notes on Evolution

Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2019 9:44 am
by geo
Harry Marks wrote:Do fish get inguinal hernias from heavy lifting?
I don't think this is a serious question, but the article explains it.

Re: Some Notes on Evolution

Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 5:54 pm
by DB Roy
geo wrote: There's no question that life started in the oceans. As Dawkins has said—not facetiously—our "185 Millionth Great Grandfather" was a fish. As DB Roy mentions, look at the gills on a developing fetus. It really isn't much of a stretch to suppose that hiccups are a vestigial holdover from our aquatic heritage, and quite possibly repurposed during mammalian evolution. I'm not sure what all the hubbub is all about. Yes, it's still theoretical, but quite plausible. There are all kinds of vestigial artifacts in our evolutionary history. For example, that men are far more likely to develop inguinal hernias is something inherited from fish.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-13278255
This article also discusses the fishy origins of the hiccup. Good article!