🔬 Milk of other animals

Milk of other animals is a section about the milk of animals that people hardly ever milk, such as seals and bears. This section brings together the milk of animals that are rarely milked; it is interesting to compare with familiar cow’s, goat’s and sheep’s milk. It covers domestic but non-dairy species — pig, llama, alpaca — as well as wild animals: musk ox, elephant, polar bear, seals and whales.

The range in composition is huge. Hooded seal milk (about 60% fat) is roughly 15 times fattier than cow’s milk, and whale and polar bear milk also contain tens of percent fat. At the same time, llama and alpaca milk is not that far from cow’s milk in composition, and musk ox milk, according to data cited by the FAO, has about 5.4% fat — not much for an Arctic animal. Lactose content varies too: many marine and polar species have little, while llamas have a lot.

Many figures for these species come from single studies of a small number of animals, so they should be treated as approximate. Collecting them takes special effort: for example, female polar bears and seals are examined in the wild, and elephants among working animals in Myanmar. The data are used in zoology, veterinary medicine and for rearing young animals in captivity.