Mamels life animal

Are you an anthropologist? Are you going to be in Chicago for the meetings in a couple weeks? Love lactation research?  And most importantly, do you like getting up super early in the morning? MOTHERS, MILKS, AND MEANING: INNOVATIONS IN STUDYING LACTATION, INFANT FEEDING, AND DEVELOPMENTAL ECOLOGY in HUMANS AND NONHUMAN PRIMATES Thursday, November 21, 2013: 8:00 AM-11:45 AM Barbershop (Renaissance Blackstone Hotel) From the abstract : “The goal of this panel is to bring together a range of anthropologists specializing in human and non-human primate lactation and breastfeeding to bridge this gap and explore the biological, sociocultural and structural concepts that characterize infant and juvenile feeding among humans and primates. This panel serves as an opportunity for the exchange of new ideas and novel methodology, while facilitating an increased understanding of how physiology, behavior, and social practices are reshaping our understanding of milk and breastfeeding and

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

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