# How common are large non-lactating breasts in the animal kingdom? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 1, 2004, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-large-non-lactating-breasts-in-the-animal-kingdom/277501 "2004-12-01T15:45:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![According\_to\_Pliny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e7dd6/32.png) [@According\_to\_Pliny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/According_to_Pliny)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-large-non-lactating-breasts-in-the-animal-kingdom/277501/1 "2004-12-01T15:45:18Z")
Are humans alone in having large breasts when not lactating? Do any of the apes or monkeys do this? And for that matter, not being a country boy, I’m not sure about cows even, or goats and sheep. Do they only have udders when they are used for milk production? Do elephants develop udders when calving? Or sea cows? ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-large-non-lactating-breasts-in-the-animal-kingdom/277501/2 "2004-12-01T16:33:46Z")
We are unique among primates for having breasts. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-large-non-lactating-breasts-in-the-animal-kingdom/277501/3 "2004-12-01T17:32:07Z")
Elephant mammaries do swell when lactating, but shrink when not. (They’re located between the front legs, like a human, not the hind legs like a cow.) Interestingly enough, an elephant calf with nurse from any lactating female elephant that’s handy, not just her mother. Cow udders shrink some, but don’t go away completely when not lactating, from what I’ve been able to find. Because dairy cows are used for dairy, it’s hard to find information on dairy cows that aren’t lactating. The ideal is to keep them lactating as long as possible. Maybe a farmer-doper can be more specific and tell us if there’s a dairy/meat cow difference. I would suspect, though I don’t know, that other ruminants would be similar. Can’t find anything about manatee udders (“sea cows”), but there is this [charming story](http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/2002/02/01/news/local/2584414.htm?1c) about an adoptive manatee mom who started spontaneously lactating! I think my favorite weird lactator is the [platypus](http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/midorcas/animalphysiology/websites/2004/Newton/Platypus.htm), who doesn’t have breasts, udders or even nipples. The milk just sort of oozes out onto the fur, where the baby platypi lick it off! ---
**Author:** ![vetbridge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vetbridge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vetbridge)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-large-non-lactating-breasts-in-the-animal-kingdom/277501/4 "2004-12-01T18:08:30Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > it’s hard to find information on dairy cows that aren’t lactating. Here is a webpage with info on non-lactating dairy cows… > **[Website Maintenance: Be Back Soon | McDonald’s](https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/errors/404.html)** > > Website Maintenance: Be Back Soon | McDonald’s ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-large-non-lactating-breasts-in-the-animal-kingdom/277501/5 "2004-12-01T19:33:04Z")
I read this as **How common are large non-lactating breasts in the United Kingdom** and thought goodness, what a surreal question. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Roscoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f6c823/32.png) [@Captain\_Roscoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Roscoe)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-large-non-lactating-breasts-in-the-animal-kingdom/277501/6 "2004-12-01T20:14:54Z")
> [@lieu](#): > > I read this as **How common are large non-lactating breasts in the United Kingdom** and thought goodness, what a surreal question. Snap. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-large-non-lactating-breasts-in-the-animal-kingdom/277501/7 "2004-12-01T23:05:11Z")
Some have speculated that humans’ female breasts evolved because it’s a sexual visual cue to the male from the front, which resembles the curves of the rear. Most other primates (and other mammals) get their visual cues from the rear aspect. I guess it was easier for evolution to come up with swollen breasts than to change men’s idea of sexy. On the other hand, humans are unique among the primates in having round buttocks, since they’re used for walking upright, so I’m not sure how much I believe it. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-common-are-large-non-lactating-breasts-in-the-animal-kingdom/277501/8 "2004-12-01T23:26:09Z")
We aren’t the only primate with genitalia-reminiscent secondary sex characteristics on our chest. From [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=281864): > [@CalMeacham](#): > > Cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris definitely agrees with it. He cites it several times (See, for instance, his book Our Kind. > > I agree with it, too. You can find statements showing that breasts are a primary sexual attraction from cultures all over the world – even from cultures that don’t obviously promote breasts. Shakespreare has lots of quotes about them (See Eric Partridge’s Shakespeare’s Bawdy). I’ve read quotes and myths from American Indians and elsewhere. Erotic carvings from the subcontinent of India often sport amazingly large and round breasts that would do credit to a modern comic book. The Perfumed Garden f Sheikh Nefzauoi, an Arab erotic classic, definitely speaks well of breasts. A modern Western culturally-conditioned effect this is not. > I agree with Morris et al. about the “breasts as buttocks mimic” theory, and can bolster i with evidence I’ve never seen anybody else cite – the Gelada Baboon. The female Gelada Baboon has a characteristic pattern on her chest – not human-like swollen breasts, bt an oval or heartshaped pattern of “beads” in the flesh. It exactly duplicates such a patterns on the female Gelada Baboon’s rear. So we have another example of a primate who has a chestborne signa duplicating the one circling the reroductive parts on the rear. In humans the pattern takes the frm of rounded breasts because humans have a characteristic rump, unlike any other ape. Humans are he Apes with Asses, because we need that large gluteus maximus muscle to help us stand upright (other apes are knuckle-walkers. We’re the only ones to walk upright all the time). This gives us that chraceristic rear, which also doubles as a sexual signal. (When chimpanzees – close relatives of ours who share something like 98% of our DNA – go into heat, the female’s rear gets swollen and very pink. It’s kind of grotesque to look at, but I can see the similarity to the human female rump I adore.) > > I suspect that there’s als an element of a nicely rounded rum and breasts being an indicator that the female is well-fed and in good health (it’s been suggested hat a rooster’s comb, for instance, acts this way as a sexual health symbol, since it’s “erect” and brightly colored on a healthy rooster, bt shrunken and faded on a unhealthy one). But that’s secondary to the wired-in sexual symbol that says “This way” from behind and advertises “think about this” from the front. \ Udders and the like have no function in sexual attraction, AFAIK, so they’re not directly comparable.