Saturday 19 January 2013

did humans suckle wolf cubs

Curator on The Pet Museum blog  has posted a report from some centuries ago that women in Naples were employed as wet nurses for rich ladies' lapdogs. I got to wondering if that was likely to be true, and looked around the Net.

I came across this interesting argument about whether early humans routinely nursed wolf cubs at the  breast as part of a domestication process.

I've blogged previously about one theory of where dogs originated but I didn't read anything about breast feeding at that time.

2 comments:

curator said...

Parlance, what a great find on that argument. Funny how polarized people can get on the subject. I always thought it was a wonderfully loving action to suckle any lost baby regardless of specie, and I had heard reports over the years of it occurring.

parlance said...

curator, I loved your post about the women in Naples. It was so interesting to read the tone of polite disgust in the person reporting it. I guess we've lost our connection to the rest of our planet's species. It's okay for us to suckle (at a distance) from cows, by stealing their babies and then stealing their milk, but it's not okay for us to return the favor to our pets.