No matter which way you slice it, drinking the breast milk of a different species is weird. Most creatures in the animal kingdom can't even process the milk of their own species once they reach adulthood. This is because the gene responsible for lactase - the enzyme that breaks down dairy - gets switched off once they've been weaned. This also happens in 75% of humans, meaning that drinking milk into adulthood is not even a common human trait. This is before we get onto the whole thing of preferring to drink milk from a different animal, and actually regarding human milk with disgust. What a weird bunch we are. Some instances of parasitic milk drinking (because that's essentially what it is) have been observed occasionally in the wild, but this is usually in the form of feral kittens trying to find a surrogate for their milk needs. Rumours abound in the slightly weirder parts of the internet (including human breast milk forums), that Red Billed Oxpeckers drink from the udders of impala, but there's very little actual study to back this up. Even if this were true, it's still not quite the same as stealing literally billions of litres of milk from other animals just to put in your tea. Want to write for What Culture Science? Click here to find out how you could get paid to write about what you love.Does science make you feel warm and fuzzy? Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for a big old science hug.
