She could be pregnant and still suckling from her mother. Big sister will nurse until she’s about 18 months old.Įxactly. It is huge by this time – the nipple stretches as the joey grows – and sometimes even hangs out of the pouch. Little sister climbs up into the pouch, finds a small teat (there are four, but only three are small enough for her to gobble) and hangs on tight.īig sister joey shoves her head in the pouch to suckle from ‘her’ nipple. Big sister joey year old will leave the pouch just before her little sister is born. But they do have joeys 9-12 months apart*. It’s a general fact that kangaroos don’t have twin joeys. Two kangaroo joeys can use the pouch at the same time. When a mother roo has two joeys of different ages – which is always (read next point) – she has two unique milk compositions coming out of different nipples at the same time. Its complex, so to summarise: Tiny newborn joeys get a watery, high protein and simple carb, immunity-rich milk older pouch joeys get high carb, high protein and some fat big joeys at foot get massive fat and protein and low carbs.īut wait, there’s more. The formulation of kangaroo milk changes constantly over the year+ a joey nurses. Imagine having an affectionate, private nutritionist making you a breakfast shake every day formulated to your needs. Kangaroo joeys drink milk tailored to their age group. Again, I’m sorry.Kangaroo joeys are the cutest, but there’s more to this adorable marsupial than you think. But if I have to carry this burden of knowledge, everyone I encounter will have to share that burden with me, which is why I’m writing this post. I feel worse for knowing about it, and I wish I didn’t. But the oozing milk sweat is just a bridge too far for me. I think it’s so cool how they look like a mix of a beaver and a duck, and how they use electroreception to hunt, and that the male’s little ankle spurs are venomous. I don’t want to shame the platypuses out there, who are otherwise very cute and interesting. It sucks how, as soon as you learn this, you have to tell everyone you know, and then they ask you to stop talking about it because it’s “upsetting,” and you try to stop, you really do, but then you can’t help yourself and you’re like, “According to the BBC, because this delivery system is less hygienic than the direct nipple-in-mouth method, platypus milk contains powerful antibacterial proteins to protect the babies from illness, and these proteins may be a useful source of future antibiotics,” and then all of your friends get mad at you. It just sucks how one day you’re living your life, minding your own business, and then the next thing you know, your mind is full of images of little, freshly hatched platypuses slurping up the milky sweat oozing from their mother’s furry stomach, coating it a wet, creamy film. This makes it look like sweat, but in fact platypuses are aquatic and don’t produce regular sweat at all.Īnd here, a video about platypuses that includes an absolutely chilling graphic of a beautiful mother platypus leaking her milk all over her tummy while a little baby platypus in a backward baseball cap laps it up. But platypuses don’t have teats, so the milk just oozes from the surface of their skin. They secrete milk from specialised mammary glands, just like humans and other mammals. Immediately, I threw the book down and Googled, “Platypuses sweat milk?” Here, an explanation from the BBC’s Science Focus: I came across this fact by accident, when it was mentioned offhand in a book I was reading. Platypuses don’t have nipples, so they just sweat milk. A terrible piece of knowledge had permanently severed me from my past, and now, because hurt people hurt people, I must share it with you as well. And then, a few weeks ago, when I finally saw the glaring light of the truth, it was so blinding and terrible that I yearned to return to the shadows, where I had been safe. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and so what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. I was happy then, splashing around in the cold, dank recesses of my own ignorance. Look, I’m sorry to do this to you, but I refuse to stay silent any longer.
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