Wow! No I didn't. Do you know what changes so that we lose this ability?

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Obviously the trachea and esophogus grow together... it might be a length thing, I dunno. Only learned about it when my firstborn came along.


(edit: gah! stupid little smiley icon didn't appear! just the URL. Removed and put in regular emoticon)

I forget the term, but whatever flap it is in the back of our throat that prevents the esophagus and trachea from being open together isn't in the right position in those first few months.

__________________
I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

my bold
From CNN.com

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

The Epiglottis?

__________________
If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

Thats the one I had in mind, but I wasn't sure enough to post it...

__________________
I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

GOOD ...

I'm Glad, to Help!!!!

__________________
If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

It's the epiglottis.

The reason the condition exists at birth has to do with breastfeeding. Without, babies would choke on mother's milk.

Not a very good thing for the survival our species... Nor for the propogation of God's chosen people.

HEY!, I'm neutral, here! Just trying to present both sides of the story... Back off, man - I said back off!

Seriously, folks - there are always two or more sides to a story. Why we tend to voraciously devour one side while heinously defending the other is beyond me.

I'll let the powers that be duke it out.

Sometimes, one side or the other is just flat wrong. No, but really. We don't have to give equal time to both sides. We don't have to teach that Charles Manson is a misunderstood musician. We don't have to teach that the Holocaust is a Zionist conspiracy. And we don't have to teach ID.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Well, he Was a Misunderstood Musician, Who Also Killed, a Lot of People!!!

And, we DID, Get our Own State, Out of The Holocaust's Aftermath, But, 6 Million Lives, Does Seem, a Big Price, to Pay!!!

Hmmmmm, Maybe you Have, a Point!

__________________
If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

And "Zionist conspiracy" doesn't cover my cousins, who weren't Jewish to begin with!

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Yes - it's far too often overlooked that 3-5 million other (non-Jewish) civilians (mostly Poles) were deliberately targetted and exterminated by the Nazis, and another 8-10 million civilians and POWs (mostly Russians) were killed outside of camps via starvation or casual brutality without deliberate targetting. So appallingly the Nazis not only attempted to wipe out the Jews in The Holocaust that everyone knows about but they also committed another two Holocausts on Gentile noncombatants.

I was googling for some evolution type stuff, and hit this site. I was at first VERY confused because it is a bulletin board with the same format as this one. The content however is not. In fact it made me sick, and only sicker when I saw the number of members and people logged in at the moment. I considered sticking around to troll, but the pure and complete ignorance was disturbing. that and I didn't feel like getting put on some kinda big brother list by activating an account someplace like that.
It seems a bit relevant to the last few posts.

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/index.php

__________________
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
--Isaac Asimov

Stormfront is a well known Nazi hangout (I don't see the point in the 'neo-' prefix when their ideas don't seem to have significantly progressed from the last lot) and is watched by most of the relevant authorities and anti-nazi groups, so I can't say I'm surprised.

Returning to the epiglottis change, I believe it is necessary for speech development, so isn't just a dumb evolutionary backwater.

Chicken and egg question for you. Did some of our ancestors find a way to force the epiglottis down, or did we take advantage of the change when we started advancing our hoots and calls into more complex language.

__________________
I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

My non-scientific wild guess: it's a fairly simple mutation, but until someone came up with a way (complex communication) to outweigh the increased danger of choking it was a disadvantage and kept to a small section of the population.

I would have to say ditto to this, from my semi-scientific guess. It is a funny thing though. One of the reasons teaching babies sign language has become kinda hip. We're discovering that babies have the ability and desire to communicate earlier than previously thought, they just can't form words. They can use rudimentary sign language though. So the evolution of the epiglottis and the development of speech go pretty hand in hand.

__________________
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
--Isaac Asimov

heh, any parent should be able to tell you that (of course, that's not scientific..) My wife and I generally understood what the boys were asking before they learned to talk... I think it's mostly body language reading.

Rturning to the mass murdering - everybody gets all up in arms (well, everybody sane) about the Nazis murdering millions. I have no problem at all with that - but virtually *nobody* says anything about the 20+ Million of his own people that Stalin had systematically murdered.

Just a thought

I don't agree. For example, from this page (genocide in the 20th century):
Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1992-1995 - 200,000 Deaths
Rwanda: 1994 - 800,000 Deaths
Pol Pot in Cambodia: 1975-1979 - 2,000,000 Deaths
Nazi Holocaust: 1938-1945 - 6,000,000 Deaths
Rape of Nanking: 1937-1938 - 300,000 Deaths
Stalin's Forced Famine: 1932-1933 - 7,000,000 Deaths
Armenians in Turkey: 1915-1918 - 1,500,000 Deaths

Never forget.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple