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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?

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Speaker 1: From house Stop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. So today we

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Speaker 1: are talking about nipples, all right, just gonna put it

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Speaker 1: out there. Uh, and the question of why men have

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Speaker 1: them to begin with, because you know, with all the

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Speaker 1: we talked, we've talked about breastfeeding before, bras, Uh, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't seem necessary for men to have no, Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: seem pretty useless. Yeah, but um, yeah, they basically to

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Speaker 1: make a very quick answer for all of this. To

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Speaker 1: sum it up at the beginning, Yeah, men have nipples

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Speaker 1: because women have nipples and vice versa. And that is

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Speaker 1: almost a direct quote from Andrew M. Simon's biology professor

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Speaker 1: at Carlton University, who's talking to a scientific amount can

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Speaker 1: about this question. And yeah, they've males have them because

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Speaker 1: females have them, and they're not fastigial like you might

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Speaker 1: think too, which we will explain very shortly. Right, So

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Speaker 1: at the dawn of your conception, Um, when we are

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Speaker 1: these little amorphous a sexual blobs in the womb, embryos,

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Speaker 1: embryos or embryos. I like to think of it as blobs,

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Speaker 1: little sacks of cells. Um, we are actually made up

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Speaker 1: of a bunch of the same stuff, and it's not

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Speaker 1: until a little bit later in the development. As many

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Speaker 1: of you, I'm sure are aware, that we actually have

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Speaker 1: a sex determined whether we're male or female, and so

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Speaker 1: basically we we get a lot of the same stuff

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Speaker 1: and nipples just never fell off, right, um. And it

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Speaker 1: all has to do with the timeline of how are

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Speaker 1: twenty three pairs of chromosomes express themselves as the the

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Speaker 1: embryonic blob develops into a full, full blown fetus, full full,

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Speaker 1: full blown yes. Um, well, yeah, Well, the thing is

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Speaker 1: that nipples aren't a sex linked characteristic. Everybody gets them.

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Speaker 1: Cecil Atoms over at the Straight Dope said that they

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Speaker 1: are sexually neutral, and nipples develop around the third week,

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Speaker 1: whereas the bits and pieces pertaining to boys or girls

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Speaker 1: don't develop for another couple of weeks after that the

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Speaker 1: euro genital systems. Yep, but the thing is too in

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Speaker 1: those uh, those early weeks before the like you said,

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Speaker 1: the seventh week, when that um, the one pair of

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Speaker 1: chromosomes that determines your your biological sex expresses the all

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Speaker 1: the embryos have the exact same parts, and for that reason,

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Speaker 1: women actually will retain remnants of the vas deferens that

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Speaker 1: we you know that started building back in our embryo days. Yes,

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Speaker 1: that's our blob days. Yeah, um yeah. We all get

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Speaker 1: twenty three pairs of chromosomes, as you may have heard, um,

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Speaker 1: and one pair, just one pair, determines whether we're male

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Speaker 1: or female, and the other two supply our standard equipment. Um.

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Speaker 1: That one pair of sex chromosomes programs the rest for

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Speaker 1: maleness or femaleness. And before they kick in, we're equipped

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Speaker 1: with both sets of plumbing exactly right. And um. The

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Speaker 1: genes that are not sexually, the autosomes, those are the

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Speaker 1: ones that will express into nipples, but among other things,

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Speaker 1: of course, not just covered in nipples. Most of us

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Speaker 1: and this nipples developed after three or four weeks of conception.

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Speaker 1: And what happens is we first developed something called a

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Speaker 1: milk line. I hadn't heard about this before. I hadn't either,

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Speaker 1: And it's a ridge of tissue that runs from your

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Speaker 1: upper chest to the navel and then veers down towards

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Speaker 1: the girl oin and stops on the upper thigh and

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Speaker 1: it um. It basically is this line of tissue that

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Speaker 1: nipples developed from. And it's more than two. Okay, it

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Speaker 1: just so happens that as we develop only two typically

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Speaker 1: you know the bear we normally associate as as should

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Speaker 1: be there are the ones that remained. But that's not

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Speaker 1: always the case. Now this sort of maybe have to

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Speaker 1: rethink my entire world. I didn't realize that this this existed.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I've heard of people having extra nipples before,

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Speaker 1: but I thought that's weird. How does that happen? And

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Speaker 1: I didn't realize before I read the stuff about the

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Speaker 1: milk line that that's why. So it's not uncommon for

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Speaker 1: hints of nipples pat nipples passed to hang around disguised

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Speaker 1: as a freckle or a mole um. They're called super

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Speaker 1: numerary nipples. Did I did? I pronounced that supernume a

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Speaker 1: lot of um. And yeah, you might just think that

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Speaker 1: you have a really big mole on your boob area

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Speaker 1: or your chest, abdomen wherever it could be. It could

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Speaker 1: be a spare nipple, yeah, because that's why I I

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Speaker 1: do know someone with an extra yeah, but with a

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Speaker 1: tiny I mean, you can barely tell that they're they're nipples. Um,

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Speaker 1: and they're directly below where um, you know, his actual

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Speaker 1: nipples are. And uh yeah, I always thought that it

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Speaker 1: was an extra growth, but no, it just means that they,

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Speaker 1: you know, they had an overly developed milk ridge line,

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Speaker 1: which is why you wouldn't have one, you know, probably

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Speaker 1: hanging out right on top of your belly button there,

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Speaker 1: you know, it would be more in parallel line. But

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Speaker 1: typically mammals. Fun fact also about nipples is that usually

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Speaker 1: mammal mammalian nipples come in even numbers. Oh yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think so. We have two arms, two legs most of us.

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Speaker 1: There is one possem and I forget which which exact

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Speaker 1: type of possumatists that comes with thirteen nipples all in

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Speaker 1: a in a nice story. Oh yeah, there's one right

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Speaker 1: in the middle, like a baker's, doesn't you know. Yeah, Well,

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Speaker 1: anyway back to people. Um, the American Journal of Primatology,

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Speaker 1: well okay, well this is primatology. They were talking about monkeys,

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Speaker 1: but they talked about humans too, And in the American

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Speaker 1: Journal of Primatology in two thousand they said, uh, most

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Speaker 1: supernumerary nipples result from a failure to terminate mammary bud development.

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Speaker 1: So you know, it's not like they're hurting you, just

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Speaker 1: that you know, your body was like, I've got other

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Speaker 1: things to do. And it's linked to what it's something

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Speaker 1: called the hawks is gene It's all about gene expression.

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Speaker 1: And you know how how fully it uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: the genes will express themselves and either stop the the

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Speaker 1: milk ridge development or keep it going too long. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the hawks genes set up the head to tail organization.

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Speaker 1: And the reason why supernumerary nipples are relevant in this

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Speaker 1: discussion of male nipple I want to say nippleage male. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The reason why it's relevant is because, according to the

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Speaker 1: European Journal Pediatrics, there is a higher prevalence of supernumerary

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Speaker 1: nipples on the left side of the body and in men. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so you should be running to a mirror right now.

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Speaker 1: Those those freckles, You've got freckles on your abdomen. I'm

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Speaker 1: just saying it could be could be an extra set

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Speaker 1: from the the old milk line. Right. Um. Now, kind

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Speaker 1: of back to more of why men have nipples in

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Speaker 1: the first place. Um, Basically, there's this talk of genetic correlation.

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Speaker 1: The idea of two traits shared genetic basis right, because

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Speaker 1: going back to our conversation about UM, the chromosomes we have,

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Speaker 1: you know, women developed breasts because of that, you know

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Speaker 1: that twenty three pair of chromosomes, the double X. That

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Speaker 1: UM is linked to sexually dimorphic traits, which are basically,

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Speaker 1: you know, the obvious physical traits. You know, men grow up,

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Speaker 1: you know, developing penises, women developing v China's things like

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Speaker 1: that that separate UM males and females. But nipples are

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Speaker 1: not one of those things. It's a genetic correlation. And basically,

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Speaker 1: in order for men to from an evolutionary standpoint, for

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Speaker 1: men to not have nipples, it would have to be

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Speaker 1: um more beneficial for them reproductive ones to not have them, right,

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Speaker 1: it would have to be doing some damage or hurting

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Speaker 1: them in some way, or be more um evolutionarily advantageous.

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Speaker 1: There we go to not have them. And since basically

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Speaker 1: essentially it doesn't matter if men have nipples. So but

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Speaker 1: since it's a traite, a genetic trait that men and

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Speaker 1: women share, and it's so important for women to have nipples,

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Speaker 1: then it would almost be too much work for us

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Speaker 1: too for men to evolve losing nipples. Right, So it's

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Speaker 1: more that there is a lack of selection against them

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Speaker 1: rather than a specific selection for them. Right. And explaining

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Speaker 1: all of this to Scientific American, a mamalogist named Douglas

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Speaker 1: Long says, it's a lot more difficult to lose an

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Speaker 1: organ than to develop an organ. And he compared it

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Speaker 1: to the reason why we have to nails, like, we

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Speaker 1: don't necessarily need toenails at all to claw and dig trees.

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Speaker 1: You know, at least we have something to paint. Yes, exactly,

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Speaker 1: who doesn't need red fingernails for whatever reason? Um? He Actually,

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Speaker 1: Douglas Long did say something that I thought was funny

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Speaker 1: when I did more reading. He said, not one male

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Speaker 1: mammal has been shown to lactate, And then everything else

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Speaker 1: I read was like, oh, well, yeah, we've got these bats, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and goats and things. Um. Jared Diamond, he's an author

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Speaker 1: and physiologist. He pointed out in a nineteen any five

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Speaker 1: article for Discover magazine that the Dyak fruit bat in

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Speaker 1: Southeast Asia can spontaneously lactate, and that is one of

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Speaker 1: the only examples of a male mammal that has been

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Speaker 1: seen to lactate, just under no sort of laboratory um

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Speaker 1: conditions at all. Because there have been male goats and

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Speaker 1: I believe male cows that have lactated, but that's because

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Speaker 1: they were induced with hormone that's stimulated lactation. And one

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Speaker 1: one fun nipple fact stallions male horses they don't have

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Speaker 1: nipples at all. They don't neither do platypuses. Yeah, the platypus,

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Speaker 1: they were so gross. Oh I thought it was kind

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Speaker 1: of cool. Still Okay, it talks about how they don't

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Speaker 1: have nipples. They just sort of like leech milk. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the milk just comes out of their pores and then

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Speaker 1: their little baby platypus puses look it up. They don't

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Speaker 1: like it, take it away. Um, okay, well back to again,

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Speaker 1: back to people, all right. So Jared Diamond in his

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Speaker 1: article also discussed actual male human lactation. Um, it's sort

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Speaker 1: of It can occur when the pituitary gland gets all upset,

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Speaker 1: and that can happen when you face starvation. And so

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Speaker 1: he pointed to survivors of Nazi concentration camps and Japanese

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Speaker 1: prisoner of war camps who had been starving and when

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Speaker 1: they got out, they experienced lactation when they began to recover, right,

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Speaker 1: And that's because the pituitary gland in the brain stimulates

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Speaker 1: the production of a hormone called prolactin. And when we

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Speaker 1: produced prolactin, it triggers alveoli in breast tissue to produce milk.

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Speaker 1: And the reason why those concentration camp prisoners in the

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Speaker 1: prisoners of war experienced spontaneous lactation was because when your

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Speaker 1: body recovers from starvation, your glands recover a lot faster

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Speaker 1: than your liver, which absorbs hormones. So basically they have

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Speaker 1: the spike in prolactin and lactation which can also happen

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Speaker 1: in newborn's right. Yeah, this is called witches milk. And

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Speaker 1: it's when you know the baby is first born, it's

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Speaker 1: still has a lot of its mother's estrogen pumping through it,

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Speaker 1: and so it can just spontaneously lactate when it's born,

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Speaker 1: and this can continue for a weaker So yeah, because

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Speaker 1: and that's just when you're pregnant, prolactin levels surged ten

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Speaker 1: times higher than normal and that can seep into the

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Speaker 1: placenta and you might give birth to a lactating baby. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm just gonna adopt dogs. Um, but it's not just

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Speaker 1: pregnancy or starvation that can cause men to spontaneously lactate.

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Speaker 1: Diamond theorizes that some combination of manual nipple stimulation and

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Speaker 1: hormone injections may develop a father's latent potential to make milk.

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Speaker 1: And in Scientific American they touched on this issue in

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Speaker 1: again in two thousand seven, UH and they pointed out

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Speaker 1: that medical anthropologists Dana Raphael an into chronologist Robert Greenblatt

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Speaker 1: agreed that men couldn'tduce flactation by stimulating their nipples. So

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Speaker 1: I am never giving another titty twister to anyone. Well,

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Speaker 1: and that's because when um, you know, when when a

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Speaker 1: baby latches on to a nipple, it stimulates sees mechana

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Speaker 1: receptors in the brain that gets the whole pituitary glamb prolactin.

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Speaker 1: I'll be only process going. But that does not necessarily

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Speaker 1: mean that you know, if you were if you were

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Speaker 1: to give um, if you were to give a man

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Speaker 1: a baby and the baby was yes, and the bay

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Speaker 1: were to latch onto that male nipple, because it does

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Speaker 1: happen sometimes. Um, you know, babies just they see a

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Speaker 1: nipple and they will latch on if they're hungry. But

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Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean that all of a sudden, you know,

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Speaker 1: the faucets will will turn on and and a mail

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Speaker 1: will just spontaneously lactate. It definitely takes um, takes a

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Speaker 1: little bit of time. There was one study, this was

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Speaker 1: out of Canada. They were looking at adoptive mothers who

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Speaker 1: had adopted infants and whether or not they could sort

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Speaker 1: of stimulate uh, lactation through using breast pumps over time

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Speaker 1: and um contact with the infant to get their bodies

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Speaker 1: producing the prolactin. And they were able to stimulate it

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Speaker 1: in about I think it was thirty of the mothers.

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Speaker 1: But it kind of just goes to show that a,

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Speaker 1: you know, women already have you and I have, even

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Speaker 1: with though we're not pregnant, have a third more prolactin

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Speaker 1: running through our bodies. Uh so we already have a

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Speaker 1: head start over men. And even with that, it's still

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Speaker 1: hard to to just automatically jump start lactation, right. Dr

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Speaker 1: Jack Newman, who's a breastfeeding expert, says, basically, know hormone

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Speaker 1: spy cast you occur in order to produce milk, and

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Speaker 1: that brings us back to the pituitary gland which we

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Speaker 1: said secretes prolactin, and he actually Dr Newman points out that, hey,

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Speaker 1: it could be a pituitary tumor just while you're while

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Speaker 1: you're lactating um. But there's a lot of other stuff.

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Speaker 1: There's medications like thorazine, which was a popular antipsychotic in

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Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century, which affected the pituitary gland and

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Speaker 1: cause a spike in prolactin production, and certain issues like

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Speaker 1: testosterone deficiencies with male hypogonadism can cause a condition called galactia,

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Speaker 1: which is basically spontaneous lactation like we keep um talking about.

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Speaker 1: And if you're curious as to whether or not the

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Speaker 1: milk that men can produce is similar to the milk

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Speaker 1: that women produce, as a matter of fact, in nine

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Speaker 1: study conducted at the University of Western Australia confirms, but

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Speaker 1: yes it is. It had very similar contents to um

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Speaker 1: female levels of protein, lactose, and electrolytes in this in

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Speaker 1: this man's milk. It's usually just it's not so much

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Speaker 1: the content of the milk but the volume. Even when

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Speaker 1: men do lactate, they're not you know, they're not filling

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Speaker 1: up baby bottles. A writer from Slate actually did a

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Speaker 1: little experiment. He wrote about his journey into male actation.

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Speaker 1: He bought a breast pump manual not I don't know, motorized,

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Speaker 1: the electric little lact ones I don't know, and m

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Speaker 1: he you know, he just didn't have any success and

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Speaker 1: he gave up. He I don't think he liked the

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Speaker 1: idea of having to pump his body full of furmans

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Speaker 1: and take a three hour three hour breaks. And right

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Speaker 1: he was like, I can either take these these medications

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Speaker 1: that will you know, mess with my pituitary grooland and

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Speaker 1: possibly made me kind of crazy and lactate. And he

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Speaker 1: tried to take um finn a Greek which is this

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Speaker 1: uh like a herbal supplement. You can get it um

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Speaker 1: any natural food store that's supposed to do a similar thing,

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Speaker 1: like a lot of um, you know, like maybe like

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Speaker 1: neonatal uh. Herbal supplements will contain Finn agreed to help

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Speaker 1: stimulate lactation. And he was taking it like three times

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Speaker 1: a day, drinking fun of Greek tea and yeah, nothing,

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Speaker 1: nothing happened. And he determined that maybe it was the

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Speaker 1: fact that he didn't have an infant. I mean, he's

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Speaker 1: a single guy and he didn't have any any little

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Speaker 1: life depending on him and his like patition, and it

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Speaker 1: was interesting, like um. Charles Darwin, not not too surprisingly,

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Speaker 1: was fascinated by this this uh this whole male nipple conundrum,

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Speaker 1: and in the Descent of Man he posited that men

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Speaker 1: used to evolutionary or evolutionary ancestors. Men and women used

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Speaker 1: to uh suckle our young and it was only once

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Speaker 1: our litters got smaller to where it could be managed

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Speaker 1: at breastfeeding could be managed by just one of the

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Speaker 1: caregivers than men gradually stopped breastfeeding. But we still just have,

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Speaker 1: you know, they still just have the remnants because like

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Speaker 1: I said, it's not um. Male nipples are not vestigial

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Speaker 1: because they do contain um, breast tissue, the blood, vessels, nerves, alveoli.

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Speaker 1: They can you know, men can lactate, yes, and they

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Speaker 1: do and they do in Central Africa, the the Aca tribe.

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Speaker 1: I think that's a prous it um. The Guardian and

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Speaker 1: two thousand five reported on American anthropologist Barry Hewlett who

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Speaker 1: lived with this tribe and studied them, and he discovered

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Speaker 1: that the men nurse their infants when the mothers are

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Speaker 1: you know, away doing whatever. And part of this is

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Speaker 1: their whole culture is so fascinating to to us as

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Speaker 1: Westerners because all of their roles are completely fluid. They

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Speaker 1: have no problem trading off cooking, hunting, caring, caring for

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Speaker 1: the babies. He even pointed out, um that the men

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Speaker 1: would you know, strap the babies to their sides and

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Speaker 1: go down to the equivalent, but the tribal equivalent of

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Speaker 1: the bar, and hang out with their buddies with the baby.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't you know, it wasn't weird because they don't

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Speaker 1: view children as burdens something to you know, waste resources

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Speaker 1: or whatever, take up resources. I guess I should say, um,

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Speaker 1: they look at children as a blessing and so everybody

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Speaker 1: wants to pitch in and take care of the babies,

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Speaker 1: including the dads who have been known to la date. Well.

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Speaker 1: It's also interesting because you know, the women are away

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Speaker 1: from the household because they're seen as just as adequate

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Speaker 1: hunters and gatherers, you know, in this in this culture

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Speaker 1: as the men are. And according to the anthropologists, he

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Speaker 1: said that men are with their infants forty seven percent

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Speaker 1: of the time, which he by his calculations, was basically

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Speaker 1: the most dedicated fatherhood of any culture on the planet. Um.

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Speaker 1: Which is kind of fascinating that that these men would

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Speaker 1: um possibly be lack hating more than say, fathers in America,

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Speaker 1: which don't spend as much time with their children. So UM,

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Speaker 1: so buck up, guys, just if if you spend a

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Speaker 1: little more time with your family, maybe you too could

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Speaker 1: breast face Well, I mean, it's just it's a It's

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Speaker 1: an interesting example because Jared Diamond, who wrote that Discover

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Speaker 1: magazine article that you were talking about earlier, uh, says

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Speaker 1: that the evolutionary conditions that would favor male lactation would include, UM,

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Speaker 1: a litter of infants that constitute a big burden to nourish,

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Speaker 1: so you know, you would need um more more hands

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Speaker 1: on deck, monogamous male and female pairers, high confidence of

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Speaker 1: males in their paternity, and hormone preparation of fathers for

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Speaker 1: eventual lactation while their mate is still pregnant. They expect

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Speaker 1: to do that. And it sounds like to some degree

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Speaker 1: maybe this pygmy group in Central Africa, UM, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: maybe perhaps those those conditions are more ripe in the

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Speaker 1: less gender segregated society. They don't see it as weird.

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Speaker 1: If the women can do what the men can do

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Speaker 1: it and vice versa. Yeah, and because guys, have you

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Speaker 1: got the equipment and you might actually have more nipples

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Speaker 1: than we do on the left side of your body.

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Speaker 1: I'm so glad I know about milk ridges now to

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Speaker 1: not really though I don't really I didn't want I

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Speaker 1: didn't really want to know it. What fascinating nipples. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: with that, Carolina is going to have to go through

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a therapy from all of this

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Speaker 1: male lactation research. Um. And of course now we would

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Speaker 1: like specifically letters from men who pops possibly lactated. Is

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Speaker 1: there anyone out my gosh that would be okay, that

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Speaker 1: would be fascinated actually to actually hear from one of

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Speaker 1: you guys. I mean it's like especially fathers out there,

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Speaker 1: who have you know, dealt with because it seems like

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Speaker 1: this issue is a lot more pertinent for for dads

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Speaker 1: who have wondered like, well could I, you know, could

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Speaker 1: I help my milady out and with the breastfeeding duties?

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Speaker 1: Well you maybe maybe maybe let's not talk to some

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Speaker 1: the AKA people in Central Central Africa maybe have some

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Speaker 1: tips and in the meantime, you can email us at

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Speaker 1: Mom's stuff at how stuff works dot com. And we

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Speaker 1: got a couple of emails to read right now. So

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Speaker 1: I have an email here from Marie in our in

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Speaker 1: response for episode on women in science. She says, I'm

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Speaker 1: a third year grad student in microbiology immunology research, and

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Speaker 1: I'm wondering about the cultural influence on women in the workplace.

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Speaker 1: A huge proportion of research labs, at least in the biomedfield,

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Speaker 1: is international. Many of them are women. We have a

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Speaker 1: Japanese female post doc and a Chinese female research associate,

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Speaker 1: but I haven't exactly counted the proportion. Are there other

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Speaker 1: countries that still discourage women in science? In my own experience,

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Speaker 1: I've never felt at all any discouragement to go into

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Speaker 1: sciences because of being a woman. On the contrary, many

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Speaker 1: of my science teachers were women. I hear all this

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Speaker 1: talk about gender bias, but I've never seen it in action.

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Speaker 1: Of course, the biomedical sciences are different from other fields.

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Speaker 1: I've read somewhere that it's engineering and compute your sciences

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Speaker 1: that are the most skewed, And yes, she is right.

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Speaker 1: Engineering has ze lowest proportion of female students least in

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Speaker 1: higher education. So thank you for your input. Marie and

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Speaker 1: I have an email from Lorian. This is in response

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Speaker 1: to our pregnancy test podcast and my enthusiasm for the

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Speaker 1: self exam. The pelvic self excuse yeah um, she said.

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Speaker 1: There is a birth control method called the Fertility Awareness

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Speaker 1: Method or FAM, which uses basil, body temperature, cervical fluid,

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00:23:33,920 --> 00:23:36,920
Speaker 1: and the position and openness of your service to chart

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Speaker 1: when you're ovulating. It's very easy once you learn, and

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00:23:39,880 --> 00:23:42,560
Speaker 1: takes really only seconds a day to take your temperature,

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Speaker 1: note what your cervical fluid is doing, or to check

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Speaker 1: your service. If you're trying to conceive, you can concentrate

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Speaker 1: your efforts, and if you're trying to avoid pregnancy, you

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00:23:51,800 --> 00:23:55,080
Speaker 1: can avoid the fertile window. There is a wonderful book

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Speaker 1: called Taking Charge of Your Fertility that talks about it

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Speaker 1: in detail. I didn't do a pelvic selfing ZAMBA because

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Speaker 1: I was charting my cycle. I was able to get

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Speaker 1: my first positive test nine days after ovulation, which was

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Speaker 1: quite early. My midwife was so confident in my days

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Speaker 1: after seeing my chart, we opted not to do an

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Speaker 1: early dating ultrasound. It's really a neat method and has

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Speaker 1: empowered me and knowledge of my body utili awareness. I

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Speaker 1: need to look more into that. Uh. And of course

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Speaker 1: our email is mom Stuff at how stuff works dot

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Speaker 1: com and you can find us over on Facebook, follow

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Speaker 1: us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, and check out

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00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:33,480
Speaker 1: our blog during the week, It's stuff Mom Never told

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00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:40,040
Speaker 1: You from how Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to

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00:24:40,160 --> 00:24:42,919
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.

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Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most

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