Who said men can’t multi-task? Another weird Wikipedia article, trawled from the depths of the web’s favourite knowledge repository by the Wikiworm.
Male lactation in zoology means production of milk from mammary glands in the presence of physiological stimuli connected with nursing infants. The term male lactation is not used in human medicine.
Newborn babies of both sexes can occasionally produce milk, this is called neonatal milk (also known as “Witch’s milk”) and not considered male lactation.
The phenomenon of successful human male breastfeeding has been credibly observed in several cases. Male lactation was of some interest to Alexander von Humboldt, who reports in Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent of a citizen of Venuzuela who allegedly nurtured his son for three months when his wife was ill, as well as Charles Darwin, who commented on it in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871):
“It is well known that in the males of all mammals, including man, rudimentary mammae exist. These in several instances have become well developed, and have yielded a copious supply of milk. Their essential identity in the two sexes is likewise shown by their occasional sympathetic enlargement in both during an attack of the measles.”
Darwin later considered the nearly perfect function of male nipples in contrast to greatly reduced structures such as the vesicula prostatica, speculating that both sexes may have nursed young in early mammalian ancestors, and subsequently mammals evolved to inactivate them in males at an early age.
Pam Byrnes: I had no idea you could milk a cat!
Greg Focker: Oh, you can milk just about anything with nipples.
Jack Byrnes: I have nipples Greg – could you milk me?
…and now we know the answer to that question! Yes, you theoretically could milk Robert De Niro
The BBC’s Jeremy Vine, using the above thesis, could be Tesco’s sole supplier, him being the biggest tit in the universe, if you will pardon the expression.
apparently Russell Brand is in talks to start supplying Asda, Morrisons, Aldi and Lidl
It works for the Dayak Fruit Bat
http://www.bu.edu/cecb/files/2009/08/lactationmale-fruit-bats.pdf
nature’s show offs
Worm, nobody appreciates the range of The Dabbler’s eclectic interests more than I, but I must say that was one jarring picture and post to be confronted with first thing in the morning with a sore head.
sorry! I was pretty freaked out by it too when I found it!
That’s ok, but maybe you can make it up to us with a nice post on pink clouds and bunny rabbits.