The other day, when I was breastfeeding, I wondered how marine mammals such as whales and dolphins feed their young with milk underwater. As well as carrying their young, dolphins produce milk to feed them. Over the years, young dolphins learn to fish on their own and drink less mother’s milk.
Dolphins produce milk. Dolphins are mammals of the cetacean order, and all mammals produce milk and have nipples for its secretion. A dolphin mother normally feeds its babies by squirting milk into their mouths due to the difficulty of suckling underwater and the small size of dolphin mammary glands.
However, after a while, the calves learn to suckle while the mother dolphins swim, although the mother often slows down the feeding of the calf. Caring for her cub, the mother dolphin stands nearby and carefully directs the movements of the cub.
The Behaviors of Baby Dolphins
Baby dolphins tend to stay close to their mothers for several years before heading out on their own. Dolphins carry a baby for 12 months and the young are usually born first with tails and are mostly cared for by their mothers and other related and unrelated females.
For the first six months or two years of their existence, baby dolphins feed exclusively on their mother’s milk, and then they feed mainly on shellfish and fish. While dolphins previously carried their newborn offspring up to ten years after birth, most dolphins feed their babies with milk for two to three years after birth.
A newborn dolphin is completely dependent on its mother and sucks thick, mushy milk from her nipples until she manages to catch a fish. As soon as the simulation starts, the whale’s nipples appear and milk is thrown into the water. The mother whale then drops the milk into the baby whale’s mouth, and this is how whales breastfeed their young. The sperm whale has inverted nipples and this makes it easier for both mother and calf to feed the calf.
Cetaceans Have Many Peculiarities Among Mammals
Because dolphins and whales don’t actually have lips like most mammals, it’s been suggested that the mother’s abdominal muscles actually compress her mammary glands and secrete milk into the calf’s mouth. In whales and dolphins, the milk ejection reflex appears to be stimulated when the baby hits the mammary glands. For example, belugas have also been observed spewing milk when hitting the bottom of the tank.
It is also believed that mothers voluntarily regurgitate milk into the mouths of whales and calfs by rolling the tongue into a tube or U-shape around the nipple, pressing against the palate and around the nipple. .tl;DR (too long; didn’t read it) To prevent waste and maintain a streamlined marine body, dolphins use retracted nipples and voluntary milk production to efficiently breastfeed their young.
Compared to human milk or cow’s milk, dolphin milk is extremely rich and fatty, and the calf grows rapidly. The fat concentrations in whale and dolphin milk vary widely, but are much higher than in human breast milk. Compare human milk with blue whale milk, which contains 38.1% fat and 12.8% protein. Milk contains 33% fat, 6.8% protein and 58% water with trace amounts of lactose.
The Composition of Dolphin Milk
In bottlenose dolphin milk, crude protein varied in a lower range than fat, but the two were positively correlated (12). Otherwise, we can only conclude that the composition of bottlenose milk varies widely, with reported lipid levels ranging from 11% to 51% (). Although the protein content of bottlenose dolphin milk is higher than that of other cetaceans, its energy value is comparable to that of some terrestrial mammals.
This study aimed to (1) determine changes in milk composition in bottlenose dolphins during lactation, (2) investigate the relationship between milk composition and reproductive status in lactating female dolphins, and (3) compare the milk composition of bottlenose dolphins with other cetaceans milk for comparison.
Based on analysis of changes in milk composition in each dolphin, fat (all three dolphins) and crude protein (two of three dolphins) increased significantly (P<0.05), while lactation drank water (two thirds), but the sugar content did not change. We took advantage of the fact that bottlenose dolphins can be trained to voluntarily collect milk and that progesterone concentrations can be determined from serum fractions (West et al., 2000).
When Baby Dolphins Begin to Eat
In Australia, young bottlenose dolphins can be seen eating small fish around 4-5 months old (although they are still dependent on their mother’s milk). Other characteristics of dolphins that make them mammals rather than fish are that they give birth to live young rather than lay eggs and feed their young with milk. Under water, however, dolphins’ bodies must remain thin to prevent drag, and they cannot risk feeding and losing all their milk in the surrounding water.
Species such as the humpback whale, sperm whale and other whales and dolphins have a high fat content in the milk of species such as the humpback whale and therefore the young gain a lot of weight every day.
Blue whale milk can reach 61% fat, which even Paula Deen would consider excessive. Leviathans aren’t even the fattest milk producers in the animal kingdom. Like humans, blue whales have two such glands, meaning that each adult female carries about a quarter ton of milk-producing equipment.
Whale milk contains over 50% fat, and for this reason, calves grow very quickly, at almost 90 kg (198.4 lb) a day. Among the cruel ways in which dolphins are killed are their own children.
