Books 

Your Inner Fish

- Disney FamilyFun magazine

Laugh too long, eat too much or otherwise irritate the nerves in your throat, and suddenly you’ve got them: hiccups. What happened was those nerves triggered a spasm in your diaphragm, a muscle at the bottom of your chest.

According to Neil Shubin, author of “Your Inner Fish,” we have our fish and amphibian ancestors to thank for this annoyance. “The ‘hic’ part of your hiccup happens when you quickly breathe in and a little flap at the back of your throat closes, which is a normal mechanism to jump-start gill-breathing in some creatures.” Although human hiccups almost always go away on their own, if you can’t wait, try quickly swallowing a teaspoon of sugar, which is believed to soothe those jangled nerves in your throat. Or just think about swimming with your ancestors and hold your breath.