50 Years Ago

Strange cases of animal communication continue to be discovered. One of the highspots of this year’s International Ethological Conference … was Roger Payne’s account of the “song” of the hump-backed whale. Payne … has been analysing deep sea recordings made in the vicinity of Bermuda during the annual spring migration of these animals, and has found that the whales not only produce many different squeals, squeaks and groans, ranging from ultrasonic to very low frequency sounds, but also that these sounds are arranged into a highly complicated “song”. The song of the whale is in many ways like a bird song, but differs in that it lasts not for a few seconds, but for eight or nine minutes … Payne believes that the singing whales are communicating with each other, and suggests that they may do so at distances as great as tens or even hundreds of kilometres.

From Nature 18 October 1969

100 Years Ago

One of the commonest and most disfiguring abnormalities of the modern mouth is a forward protrusion of the upper incisor teeth, with which is usually combined a retraction of the chin and a crowding of the lower incisor teeth. On this condition Mr. D. M. Shaw … has recently thrown quite a new light (Lancet, August 23). He has shown that a certain “perverted functional activity” of the tongue will produce the series of anomalies which dentists have so often to correct in the mouths of modern children … Mr. Shaw directs the attention of dentists to the strength with which the tongue can be made to press against the anterior part of the roof of the mouth … thus exerting a much greater power to produce deformity than is used by dentists to correct malposition of the teeth. Tongue-pressure of this nature is particularly common among children, especially when eating soft or pulpy food, being really a form of tongue mastication. This form of mastication appeals to children because it yields a fuller sense of taste if the food is sweet or agreeable than the legitimate use of teeth and gums. The point which is quite new in Mr. Shaw’s demonstration is that during the palate-pressure action of the tongue the genio-glossus muscle exerts a retracting action on the chin region of the lower jaw.

From Nature 16 October 1919