🐋 Whale

The whale is a marine mammal, and the mother feeds her calf milk right in the water. As researchers explain, she squirts thick milk into the calf's mouth in short bursts. In humpback whales off Hawaii, a single suckling bout lasts about 30 seconds on average, ranging from 15 to 55. In a 2017 video, scientists filmed for the first time milk visible in the water next to a calf, so some of it does disperse.

According to a review by Olav Oftedal (1997), the milk of baleen whales in mid-lactation contains 30–50% fat, 9–15% protein and only 40–53% water. Toothed whales and dolphins have less fat, 10–30%. For comparison, cow's milk has about 3.3% fat, so whale milk is roughly ten times richer. The author cautions that samples are few, and some of the older data come from commercial whaling and are not very precise.

Baleen whales nurse for a short time, 5–7 months, and during this period the mother hardly eats, living off the blubber reserves she built up on the feeding grounds. A blue whale carries her calf for 10–12 months and weans it at about 6–7 months (NOAA). A humpback calf stays close to its mother for up to a year. Toothed whales, by contrast, nurse their young for 1–3 years.

Why it matters to you. Whale milk is not food for people: it isn't sold, and samples are collected only for research. But it shows clearly how milk adapts to an animal's way of life: in the cold ocean a calf needs to gain weight and a layer of blubber fast, so the milk is thick and very nourishing.