— CHARLES DARWIN,On the Origin of Species HOPEFULLY NOW WE CAN ALL RELAX AND UNDERSTAND that breasts are, truly, designed for the purpose of feeding infants. With that out of the way, it’s worth exploring briefly how the evolutionary zinger of lactation came about. As wondrously unique as human breasts are in their pendulosity, their basic glandular architecture is shared by all other mammals. Our packaging is just more fetching. Other mammals have some notably oddball features. The manatee has nipples under her flippers. The nipples of the aye-aye (a small primate) sit near the mother’s rear end. The gelada monkey’s nipples are so close together that the baby can suck both at once. Spiny anteaters and platypuses, rare egg-laying mammals, have no nipples, but they “sweat” milk to the puggle in their pouches through special glands. I don’t know what a puggle is, but I want one. A hedgehog-like mammal from Madagascar takes the trophy for most nipples, twenty-four, and the Virginia opossum is unique in having an odd number, thirteen.
