"It's not everyday that your work requires you to research the properties of giraffe saliva." Ruth Garde hawks this way

Ruth Garde is a curator and writer focusing on the intersection between art and science. Over the last thirteen years she was worked on a variety of wide-ranging projects at Wellcome Collection. For MOUTHY, Ruth has been navigating language, history and science to uncover the culture(s) of saliva. Here, she writes about her journey.

Just over a century ago an anthropologist called Franz Boas kicked off a long-standing linguistic row by claiming that the Inuit had fifty words for ‘snow’. When I started researching my proposal for ‘Hawk This Way’ I began by making a list of all the words I could think of that related to saliva. I haven’t added them all up so I’m not going to make any grand claims like Boas, but there an abundance of word that have to do with spit: expectorate, slaver, dribble, spittle, drool, flob, gleek, gob, hoick – that’s just a handful of my favourites.

I love words. As an undergraduate I studied languages and I also (partly) write for a living. So it’s no surprise that words prompted my journey into the art, science, culture and (hi)stories of spit. My journey has taken me to all sorts of unexpected places, such as Ancient Egypt, Zhou Dynasty China, 13th Century Iceland and contemporary Shanghai. I have met unsavoury characters, such as bloodthirsty Nordic dwarves, vengeful Greek gods and South Africans who do unspeakable things with animal dung. I have discovered that the French had no phrase for ‘French Kissing’ until a few years ago, when they invented one: ‘se galocher’ (which is, unexpectedly, related to the french word for ‘ice-skate’). On that subject, I’ve also learned that, not only is it pretty fun, but there may be sound evolutionary imperatives for French kissing; there has been some evidence to suggest that males, who are apparently sloppier kissers than women, are instinctually using kisses to pick up traces of estrogen in a woman's saliva and thus gauge her fertility. Wet kisses could also be an unconscious attempt to transfer testosterone to the woman, which would stimulate her sexual interest

And of course, the science of saliva is very much part of my journey too. In that journey I’ve had the invaluable guidance of three knowledgeable advisors from Kings College Dental Institute, who have hopefully ironed out any of my misunderstandings about saliva’s many biological roles. Mind you, saliva and science are not only connected through biology and chemistry. There’s physics too. Recently, in the midst of research for a completely different exhibition project for Wellcome Collection, I was delighted to discover that saliva played a critical role in the invention of the electric battery. Who knew?

Before putting this event together I hadn’t given much thought to this most mundane of human secretions. In the process of doing so I’ve been intrigued by how many stories centre on it. I’ve been delighted and surprised by some of the experiments I’ve tried out. I’ve been confronted with all sorts of assumptions and questions. Why do some people find spit so revolting while being quite keen on swapping it with partners? Why is spitting seen as so disrespectful, yet at the same time used to ward off ill-fortune? Is there something peculiarly ‘male’ about spitting? What can you tell about someone’s state of mind from their saliva?

I’m looking forward to exploring some of these questions I’ve asked, recreating some of the experiments I’ve tried, and sharing the stories I’ve uncovered on 12th July!

To see Ruth Garde uncover the mysteries, histories and surprising stories of spit, book tickets for event Hawk This Way (12 July) here >

July 5, 2016