Do Elephants Jump? (14 page)

Frogs are killing toads in the court of public opinion. Toads are plump; frogs are lean and streamlined. Toads hop about, but frogs leap. Toads spend most of their time confined to land, while frogs cruise around in water and resurface at their leisure. But worst of all, frogs have relatively smooth skin, while toads have bumpy “warts.” Even worse, the myth persists that toads are poisonous and can give humans warts.

Toads don’t even have warts (what we commonly call warts on toads are nothing but benign growths caused by viruses), so they can’t pass them on to us. What we perceive as warts on toads are just places where the skin is thickened and cornified (covered by a cap of keratin, the type of hard tissue found in our fingernails).

But another type of “wart” is a thickened portion of epidermis surrounding the opening of the granular gland. These glands do contain poison — not enough to harm humans, although sufficient to sting the eyes or mouth. Rebecca A. Pyles, Ph.D., of the Herpetologists’ League, says that in general, the more terrestrial the frog or toad, the more numerous are these tiny, individual poison glands. Toads also possess these glands in the big bumps located just behind each eye, above each ear. The purpose of these glands is clear, as Pyles explains:

Actually, all amphibians contain some amount of poisonous glands in their skins, and some toads have a relatively high concentration of them. If a predator scoops up a toad in its mouth, the poison burns the mucous membranes in its mouth — most attackers will drop the toad, and tend not to try to kill other toads in the future.

It’s easy to understand how the “poison glands” can help a toad to survive, but what about those other “warts” that seem to exist only to make toads look ugly? We’ve seen three theories advanced to explain:

When babies get hungry, they want milk and they want it yesterday. Inevitably, overeager babies, especially those fed on the bottle, ingest air along with milk, and they experience the same gassy feeling as adults who ingest too much soda or beer at once.

There are only two ways for the baby to get rid of the air bubbles. Air can escape with the food from the stomach into the small intestine, but the passageway is closed right after a meal, nature’s way of making sure we digest our food sufficiently before it rides through the gut. The second alternative is for the air to come back up, through the esophagus, back to the mouth. A valve at the entrance of the stomach tries to block food from coming back up (or else we’d be regurgitating more than frat boys on spring break), but if there is sufficient gas, the valve bursts open and baby emits a burp or what we hoity-toity people call an eructation.

Most adults have figured out methods to force a burp, but babies need a little help. Littleton, Colorado, pediatrician Don Schiff told
Imponderables
that gentle pats are usually sufficient to dislodge air bubbles that are trapped along the esophagus or in the stomach of the baby (and adults, too). Once the bubbles have been jolted free, the air rises and we are treated to that sound which is cute when babies do it but we get yelled at for emitting. (Some drakes even use burps as mating calls, not unlike their male human counterparts, albeit with much more luck.)

Back patting isn’t just useful for humans, either. While researching this Imponderable, we stumbled upon a Web site that instructed how to burp a bottle-fed raccoon (“You must assist with burping by laying the baby across your lap and patting the upper back gently”). That begs the question of whether raccoon parents are giving their progeny such attention, although come to think of it, they are probably not giving their offspring bottled milk.

“French-style” green beans are about as Gallic as Andy Griffith. The French don’t eat American-style fat green beans, but favor haricots verts, a small-podded bean that is less than one-quarter inch in diameter and grows to approximately five or six inches in length.

Haricots verts are delicate, which means they must be picked by hand. The end result is a more elegant product, with a firmer, crunchier texture, and a nutty, more complex taste that only needs minimal cooking. (“You don’t have to boil them into submission,” notes Eddie Fizdale, owner of Peak Produce in Washington, D.C.)

Processed food suppliers wanted to cash in on the élan of haricots verts, so some enterprising marketing type created the idea of “French-style” green beans, and put them in cans and frozen food packages. Most “French-style” beans are merely ordinary American string beans halved in length and then sliced length-wise to resemble haricots verts. The result is often a tangle of stringy strands that aren’t as bulbous as conventional green beans but can be messy-looking.

We spoke to Jim Kunkel, of C&W Frozen Foods in San Bruno, California, who says that his company solved this appearance problem by choosing smaller, less mature green beans for their French-cut beans. C&W starts with shorter beans and simply cuts them in half.

“French-style” usually cost the same as “regular” green beans, a rare case in which something marketed as French is neither more expensive nor more prurient than its American counterpart. But haricots verts are much more expensive, so American farmers have taken notice. Haricots verts are now being grown in the United States and prices at the supermarket have inched downward as a result.

You know the drill. Right after the big family meal, the patriarch of the family hits the reclining chair and even before the television illuminates the den, the assembled throng hears the unmistakable sounds of “zzzzzzz, snnnnnnnort, zzzzzzzz, snnnnnnnort
….”

What causes snoring? The sound that we, the unluckily awake, hear is the vibration of air hitting the soft palate and uvula. Snoring is almost always caused by some blockage of airflow during breathing (since there is less room for the air to move because of the obstructions, the airflow is faster). Some of the most common obstructions include deviated septums, enlarged soft palates, uvulas, tonsils or tongues, and excessive tissue in the throat.

Of course, all of these obstructions are present when we are awake, too, but most people snore only when asleep because of the recumbent position and because the muscles supporting the organs in our throat are relaxed during slumber. ENT specialist Keith Holmes of Dubois, Wyoming, told
Imponderables
that as we age, the muscles in the mouth and throat “tend to become lax and flaccid,” allowing the organs and tissues they support to protrude, blocking airflow. Elderly people also have higher incidences of deviated septums than younger folks, and also suffer more from obesity, as Steven C. Marks, M.D., professor of otolaryngology at Wayne State University, explains:

But Marks observes that snoring is found commonly in children, too. Maybe we don’t notice it because no child has ever succeeded in wresting the Barcalounger from Grandpa.

Some folks experience little or no pain after being rear-ended, but then suffer greatly a day or two after. Maybe we’re cynical, but we’ve always ascribed the delay to a quick consultation with a personal-injury lawyer. Orthopedists tell us otherwise. Depending upon the study, approximately 15 to 30 percent of patients examined experience neck pain soon after the accident, but that number balloons to 60 percent when evaluated later.

In the classic whiplash pattern, a stationary car is hit from the back by a fast-moving vehicle. Even if the victim is wearing a seatbelt, the body is thrust forward, and the head lags behind for a fraction of a second. Usually, the neck is bent backward, as if the victim were looking up at the roof of the car. The strain is exacerbated by the victim’s state of relaxation (if the body could be braced for the crash, neck injuries would be minimized). The head then recoils, lurching forward into a hyperextension before swinging back to a neutral position.

Although most necks can withstand a forward thrust of fifty times the force of gravity, the rebound is often what causes the whiplash injury. If disks or vertebrae are ruptured, pain will likely occur right away, but with soft-tissue damage, pain is more likely to start from twelve to seventy-two hours later, usually centered in the neck, but often radiating to the shoulders and upper arms. When there is severe nerve or blood vessel damage, symptoms such as headaches and dizziness might occur, sometimes immediately, sometimes as long as months afterward.

Why the delay? Often, the victim exacerbates the injury unknowingly because there is no significant pain at first — a muscle strain caused by the jolt of the accident can turn into a spasm if the neck muscles are used too often or too harshly following the mishap. According to Berkeley, California, osteopath Richard O’Brien, if there is repeated use of the vertebra and ligaments around the neck after a whiplash accident, swelling will increase — it is the swelling that causes pain.

The accident often creates blood hemorrhages in the muscles and ligaments of the neck area. Although all of the mechanisms are not known, research indicates that inflammation usually increases in whiplash victims. Thomas A. Dorman, of the American Association of Orthopaedic Medicine, wrote in response to this question:

Type “whiplash lawsuits” into Google’s search engine and you can see the controversy about the legitimacy of soft-tissue lawsuits. Whiplash is the perfect malady for the malingerer or downright fraudulent litigant, as many of the conditions that generate the symptoms are unverifiable by X rays or other “hard” diagnostic tools. Visit the Web sites of personal-injury lawyers, and you’ll be apprised of the fact that there are scores of studies that conclude that whiplash victims who won legal judgments or settlements do not have a higher recovery rate from whiplash pain years after their accidents than those who have not sued. You’ll find reports that indicate that juries are deeply suspicious of all soft-tissue accident claims, and that frivolous lawsuits are routinely thrown out of the courtroom. Go to a Web site representing the insurance industry, and you’ll find studies indicating that frivolous whiplash suits are a financial drain on insurance companies (and ultimately, all consumers’ premiums) and a waste of court time.

Believe us, we’d love nothing better than to make fun of personal-injury lawyers. It may be “convenient” for the symptoms of whiplash sufferers to lag hours or days after the accident, but we haven’t found any convincing evidence that the delay isn’t a legitimate medical phenomenon.