Mamels life animal

In mammals, females dissolve parts of themselves to feed their babies. Or more science-y “mammalian females pay high energetic costs for reproduction because the synthesis of milk requires mobilization of bodily reserves to nourish developing young.” Photo by Pascal Gagneux  BACKGROUND In evolutionary biology, lots of research has been dedicated to understanding how mothers direct care and nourishment to their young in relation to their own physical, social, and psychological condition and where they are at in their reproductive careers (first baby, second baby, etc). Infant characteristics may also influence how mothers invest, and the characteristic of greatest interest to evolutionary biologists has been whether they are rearing a son or a daughter. Biologists have proposed numerous hypotheses “for sex-biased maternal investment,” but the most well-known and investigated remains the Trivers-Willard hypothesis. Trivers and Willard hypothesized that a female, depending on if she is in

Greetings from Namibia! Prof. Brooke Scelza , Department of Anthropology, UCLA and I just spent the last few weeks conducting research among the Himba people of Northwestern Namibia.  This has been a long-planned collaboration between Brooke and myself and it was fantastic to finally get the project well and truly launched. Integrating methods from human behavioral ecology, ethnography, and lactation biology we were able to investigate numerous aspects of breastfeeding and breastmilk among traditionally living pastoralists.  Although bold claims and righteous results await lab assays and data analysis, here is a photo essay that captures some of what we were doing. Himba Woman & Infant photo by me! Driving from Windhoek to Kaokoland took a couple of days during which we saw baboons, giraffes, warthogs, and duikers just  chillin' roadside . Driving on the right side on the left side  (of the car, of the road) W e worked in the shadow of Omuhonga,  near the town of Okongwa

Maternal nutritional conditions during pregnancy are known to have substantially affect infant development. This was most clearly demonstrated by research into the outcomes of infants from the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944 . Because determination and differentiation of cell lines occur during embryonic development, nutritional conditions and other environmental insults early during pregnancy can substantially alter offspring phenotype, including behavior and general health. For example, the Hunger Winter produced different results depending on whether the mother’s nutrition was most interrupted during the first, second, or third trimester, or during lactation.   photo from Dutch Resist ance Museum Since then, systematic research into fetal programming and developmental origins of health and disease ( D o H A D ) has identified that early life nutritional conditions affect numerous physiological systems and organ structures, putting individuals at later risk for kidney, liver, heart,