"The surprising history of the wolf-whistle"

"So where does it come from? The clue is in its very name.

“My theory I got from talking to an old shepherd,” says John Lucas, author of A Brief History of Whistling. “He was this very knowledgeable guy, trained sheepdogs, and he ran through a whole bunch of calls with me and did one that sounded exactly like a wolf whistle. I said, ‘Christ, that’s a bit politically incorrect!’ and he said, ‘No, it’s kosher, it’s from Albania’.”... 

But by the 1930s, that two-note whistle had started being associated with an altogether different type of wolf – the sexual predator. Lucas saw that use for himself as a boy during World War Two. He lived in rural Leicestershire and there were a lot of America GIs – soldiers – stationed near his home. Lucas and his friends would follow them around hoping to get some chewing gum. “They’d hang around outside the church hall, outside dances, and they’d whistle at women as they went in. That’s when I first heard it. Quite how it transformed from Albanian sheep farmers to GIs I couldn’t guess.”"

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180322-the-surprising-history-of-the-wolf-whistle