monkey lips

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English

Illustration of echolocation structures in toothed whales. The monkey lips or phonic lips are shown in blue

Etymology

Compare French museau de singe (literally “monkey’s snout”).

Noun

monkey lips pl (normally plural, singular monkey lip)

  1. An anatomical structure in the heads of certain cetaceans involved in the production of clicks and other sounds.
    • 1990, T.W. Cranford, “Components of a hypothetical odontocete biosonar signal generator”, in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, →DOI, page S4:
      Each monkey lips/dorsal bursae complex (MLDB) is associated with one (right and left) air passage. Each complex is composed of at least two fatty bursae that are embedded in the monkey lips along the airway, a cartilagenous “stiffening” rod, and a stout ligament.
    • 2003, Peter Madsen, D.A. Carder, Whitlow W.L. Au, P.E. Nachtigall, B. Møhl, Sam H. Ridgway, “Sound production in neonate sperm whales (L)”, in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, volume 113, number 6, page 2990:
      This finding is not only excluding a laryngeal sound source, but also demonstrating that the sound source for click generation in sperm whales is indeed the monkey lips.
    • 2015 December 16, Francesco Caruso, Virginia Sciacca, Giorgio Bellia, Emilio De Domenico, Giuseppina Larosa, Elena Papale, Carmelo Pellegrino, Sara Pulvirenti, Giorgio Riccobene, Francesco Simeone, Fabrizio Speziale, Salvatore Viola, Gianni Pavan, “Size Distribution of Sperm Whales Acoustically Identified during Long Term Deep-Sea Monitoring in the Ionian Sea”, in PLOS One, →DOI:
      In the forefront of the skull, the spermaceti organ ends in a pair of black lips of connective tissue (monkey lips) that produce sounds by way of a pneumatic action. The monkey lips are also connected to the right side of the nasal passage and to the distal air sac, another ‘sound mirror’ at the front end of the head.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see monkey,‎ lip.

Further reading

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