Your voice box (larynx)

 I got the following information from Mary Roach’s review of a book called This is the Voice. I thought it was interesting.

“Infants begin life with the larynx tucked up into the back of the mouth. This makes possible nonstop suckling: unlike adults, babies can swallow and breathe at the same time. The price they pay for such highly efficient nutrient intake is that, temporarily, their speech sounds are limited. With no resonating chamber in the throat, they can manage little beyond mama, dada, gaga. As babies transition to solid food—and the risk of choking increases—the larynx begins to drop to a safer and less vocally limiting position.” The larynx of infants moves! Apparently, it drops down at about three months. Who knew? Not me.

Here's more: as we all know, during puberty men’s vocal cords thicken and their voices get lower. From an evolutionary standpoint, the author believes that a deeper voice made men seem larger and scarier, giving early human males an edge in competition for mates. On this topic, the book’s author has this to say about Donald Trump’s signature speaking behavior: “For a person like Trump, so consumed by the need to dominate and be the alpha male in every circumstance, it seems likely that…he intuitively hit on the expedient of rounding and pushing out his lips to lower his pitch slightly.”

Icky.

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