Why can animals foster different species with their breastmilk but humans only really do well with human breastmilk?
In: Biology
Before the invention of baby formula human infants were commonly fostered on goat’s milk and sheep’s milk, and it was not unheard of for them to be fostered on cows milk or even horse milk. Basically all domesticated animals that we harvest milk from have been used to feed human infants. But they do best on their own species milk (as most species do) and when that was not possible with the mother for one reason or another a wet-nurse was fairly easy to hire and in modernity we have formula that can be purchased.
well that’s not really true in a sense. We drink other animals milk because its easier for use to obtain, plus it generally has most nutrients that help us grow. Given that we consider it unethical to drink human milk (as adults) animal milk is really the only non plant based substitute
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