Neck and neck

Every day, the neck carries a staggering amount of material between the head and the torso. Even during the laziest 24-hour period, humans move more than a ton of blood, plus air and food, through the vessels and pipes of the neck.

That type of anatomical information is packed into Kent Dunlap’s “300-million-year tour” of the neck’s role in animal evolution and human culture, a book aptly titled The Neck: A Natural and Cultural History.

During his career, the Trinity professor of biology has pursued research questions about fish, lizards, frogs, and rodents at the cellular, physiological, and evolutionary levels.

But he began mulling the role of the neck across species while making pottery as a hobby. As Dunlap focused on shaping vases, he found himself increasingly thinking about the narrow passage that defines many of them.

“I started seeing the neck as a site of beauty and vulnerability,” said Dunlap, whose tome is published by the University of California Press and slated to hit store shelves in February.

His sculptures were not the only real-world connection with his writing. When Dunlap started, COVID-19 was reaping its devastation on humans via transmission that involved passing pathogens through the neck, an anatomical transition zone. He illustrates the neck’s vulnerability throughout the book with examples of execution, whiplash, and illness from goiter in humans and predation in the animal world.

On the brighter side, Dunlap also referenced the neck as a location of a vital expression. For example, it houses the voice box for speech and song. “The voice is incredible—all these different muscles in our vocal tract, and if we don’t use them just right, we’d utter complete gibberish.”

Vocal communication also is a priority in birds—some species even having two voice boxes, said Dunlap. And there are additional biological nuances in the bird world. The neck of the regal trumpeter swan, for example, is much longer than is visible. “Its trachea does an S-turn in its chest before looping down to the lungs.”

Dunlap leaves readers with a final chapter on “Shields & Saints” that spotlights the work of protection and healing at the neck. That’s when Saint Blaise, the patron saint of the throat, is introduced. A bishop and martyr in the fourth century, he was beheaded for his preaching.

It is not lost on Dunlap that his current academic research is focused on species without any necks at all—fish. And the book is a bit of a divergence from his other publications. But he stuck his neck out. “I had a great time writing, this,” he said.

Photo by Nick Caito