In a twist, scientists also discovered a spider that makes milk. A female Bornean orangutan named Batang had been providing samples weekly since her baby, Redd, was born. In fact, the method is astoundingly simple: A member of her care team samples the milk by hand. This is crucial to the trust-building process. On the day I was there, Batang and Redd were sitting close together with a blanket draped around their shoulders.
Their keeper, Erin Stromberg, cooed at them and chatted away to Batang, trying to determine her level of interest in being milked. I hung back and tried to determine her level of interest in me. Finally, I caught her eye—hoping she might see my belly and sense a kindred spirit—and instantly she pulled the blanket down over her head.
In exchange, Batang receives a bit of fruit juice and some peanuts. It is trickier to obtain milk from other species. How do you milk a 3,pound hippo , for example? Because Bibi had been trained to allow technicians to perform ultrasounds on her belly when she was pregnant, she was accustomed to being touched on her underside. This helped immensely after Fiona was born, says Barbara Henry, the curator of nutrition at the Cincinnati Zoo.
Meanwhile, a second keeper rubbed her back as a third keeper praised her while milking her from below. Taking milk from a tiger requires similar finesse, as Gail Hedberg, a neonatal care specialist for zoo animals and the co-founder of the Hand-Rearing Resource Center, would know. Over the course of several months in she worked with a team at the San Francisco Zoo to obtain milk samples from a lactating Sumatran tiger named Leanne.
Like Bibi, Leanne had been trained to allow ultrasounds during her pregnancy. For milking, the animal was comfortable lying down in a small holding area and, after lots of practice, having her mammary glands touched. One important finding: Tiger milk contains significant levels of taurine, a vital amino acid that is also present in the milk of humans and polar bears.
In other instances, samples come in from researchers who are studying animals in the wild. But animals are never put under for milk sampling alone, Power says, nor are zoo animals forced to submit to milk collection for his repository. A Western lowland gorilla named Calaya had given birth to an adorable male named Moke. Throughout her pregnancy, Calaya had been trained to allow ultrasounds in the same way that Batang was.
A first-time mom, Calaya was trained to nurse her baby and care for it, which Power says she has been doing beautifully. The high protein content of armadillo milk may be required in order to transfer the appropriate amounts of calcium and phosphorus from mother to offspring via milk for the growth of the bony plates of the carapace. While the armadillo does eat many insects, its diet is more opportunistic, including a wide variety of soil invertebrates, small reptiles, and the eggs of ground-nesting vertebrates Loughry and McDonough Our captive armadillos relish earthworms Lumbricus sp.
In addition, we observed our captive armadillos consuming soil inadvertently with their food. Sometimes they appear to be ingesting soil that contains no apparent prey. That armadillos ingest large amounts of soil also was reported by McDonough and Loughry However, the availability of dietary calcium may be spatially and temporally unreliable. Therefore, in some locations or in some seasons, trade-offs imposed by osteoderm mineralization and growth may be more significant than energy demands, as suggested by Superina and Loughry During pregnancy mid-November to mid-March and the early days of lactation, prey may be difficult to access and the time to forage limited by cold temperatures Boily and Knight Allocation of calcium to milk may require significant demineralization of the maternal skeleton—likely impacting survival of the mother Barclay ; Superina and Loughry Perhaps the relatively small size at which armadillos are weaned is another trait that enabled the adaptive flexibility for surviving across a spatial and temporal nutrient-energy mosaic.
The high proportion of energy in armadillo milk from protein suggests that armadillo pups metabolize amino acids for metabolic energy. Digestion of casein would release calcium and phosphorous as well as a large amount of amino acids for absorption. We hypothesize that excess amino acids from casein digestion are probably used for gluconeogenesis and energy. Given that some proportion of the sugar in milk is in the form of oligosaccharides, which are generally thought to be resistant to vertebrate digestion, the amount of carbohydrate energy available to the armadillo pups will be even lower.
Milk oligosaccharides are thought to perform both antibiotic and prebiotic functions. Certain human milk oligosaccharides are metabolized by commensal gut bacteria Sela and Mills , aiding the establishment of the neonatal microbiome.
Oligosaccharides in human milk also have been shown to inhibit fungal infection Gonia et al. A reliance on milk protein for a substantial proportion of the metabolic energy for offspring may be an ancestral feature of Xenarthran lactation. There is very limited data on milk from any of the Xenarthrans, but what there is suggests that protein is higher in concentration than either fat or sugar.
Similar to nine-banded armadillo milk, the milk of the giant anteater is also relatively high in protein mean value 5. A high milk protein content in the Xenarthran lineage may have been a preadaptation that allowed the evolution of the bony plates in armadillos by enabling an associated high mineral content. Protein may provide a significant proportion of metabolic energy for adult armadillos and giant anteaters.
Certainly, the diet of giant anteaters is high in protein, moderate at best in fat, and low in carbohydrate. The protein content of diets of wild armadillos also is likely above the necessary requirement for amino acids. We hypothesize that metabolism of protein into glucose would be important for adult giant anteaters and armadillos. Sloths have a diet high in mature leaves, which typically are high in protein and low in fat and simple sugars.
We hypothesize that an enhanced ability to use protein as an energy substrate may be an ancestral trait on the extant Xenarthrans, and is present in both adults and neonates. The milks of the nine-banded armadillo and the giant anteater contain the highest proportion of energy from protein of any mammal milk assayed Fig. There are no data on sloth milk as yet, but we predict that sloth milk will be similar to the milk of other Xenarthrans in having a large proportion of energy from protein.
Proportion of milk gross energy GE from fat and sugar in milks from the wide range of mammalian species whose milks have been assayed at the Nutrition Laboratory of the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.
The values for nine-banded armadillo Dasypus novemcinctus and giant anteater Myrmecophaga tridactyla milk are indicated by armadillo and giant anteater, respectively. The values for aardvark Orycteropus afer and Asian elephant Elephas maximus are also indicated. The data point nearest the armadillo point is for African lion Panthera leo. Adapted with permission from Power and Schulkin The milk of the aardvark, an ant-eating Afrotherian, also has a protein concentration that is the highest of the milk solids White et al.
Aardvark milk appears more similar to that of the Xenarthrans with comparable diets rather than to its fellow Afrotherian, suggesting that an adult diet high in protein and low in carbohydrate favors a similar milk composition.
Carnivore milk e. Our findings have implications for zoo keepers, wildlife rehabilitators, and laboratory animal caretakers who keep captive armadillos. It may be necessary to add both protein and especially calcium and phosphorus to commercially available replacement milks to concoct a suitable substitute. We are currently testing formula recipes and feeding schedules.
Supplementary Data SD1. Thanks to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, for permission to capture armadillos on its wildlife management areas. Smedley and other students at the University of the Ozarks helped collect milk, and capture and care for the armadillos. Jones and Dr. Scott provided veterinary care and advice. Jakubasz provided invaluable assistance in the laboratory.
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The Journal of Nutrition : — Hinde , K. All this calcium helps the pups develop those famous armor shells, which are actually made of bone. Next up, flamingos. That's right, flamingos. Like most birds, they feed their chicks by vomiting directly into their mouths, but that food isn't made of the day's catch. Instead, it consists of a substance called crop milk because it's stored in the parent's crop, and flamingos are one of only three birds that can produce this stuff.
But even among our feathered friends, flamingo crop milk is special because it's pink. That's because the pigments that give flamingos their brilliant coloring leach out of their feathers and into the milk. Now, all this milk might sound like the next health-food craze, but there's a good reason we generally stick to plain old cattle: They're much easier to milk. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options.
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