Fifty years ago Devorah Ben Shaul published the seminal paper “The Composition of the Milk of Wild Animals” (1963). She had spent ten years aggregating published papers of milk composition as well as directly analyzing dozens of species’ milks. Haruo Takino Eyeballing the data from 101 species, Ben Shaul posited that the composition of milks--the percent fat, protein, and sugar--did not necessarily cluster by the evolutionary history of taxonomic groups (aka phylogeny ). She noted that “grizzly bear milk and kangaroo milk had virtually the same basic milk composition(pg 333).” Ben Shaul hypothesized that milk composition may instead reflect environmental pressures or nursing behavior. Fun Fact: Manatee nipples are in their arm… er… flipper pits. Ben Shaul posited that species’ milks clustered in relation to the degree of maturity at birth, maternal attentiveness, and nursing frequency, and the exposure to water and ambient temperature. Mammals that parked their infants and foraged fo
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