Which animal breastfeeds the longest

The World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding for six months and then breastfeeding combined with solid foods for months, or as long as mother and baby desire. Award for the most protective dad — lion. If his pride is threatened the male lion will step up and protect his family from all comers. The male lion is also quite the Casanova, with a pride encompassing 7 or more lionesses and plenty of cubs.

They often view their family members as they do any other dogs, and they readily breed with their kin as a result. Male dogs, for example, have no hesitation in mating with their daughters. When boy dogs reach sexual maturity, they frequently mate with their siblings.

They also may do the same with their mothers. Hunter had been pregnant days instead of the normal before her baby was born there last week; days would be the longest pregnancy on record, topping the runner-up by about 58 days. When a female mouse gets pregnant, it only takes between 19 and 21 days for her to give birth to a litter. A typical female mouse can birth between five and 10 litters per year. Breastfed babies are also less likely to be obese when they grow up.

Breastfed babies also sleep more. Breastfeeding usually plays an integral role in forming the deep attachment between mother and baby. Bottle-feeding mothers, of course, can also be securely attached to their babies.

In the first 10 days after birth, nursing mothers hold their babies more than bottle-feeding mothers, even when they are not nursing. Newborns: A newborn should be put to the breast at least every 2 to 3 hours and nurse for 10 to 15 minutes on each side. An average of 20 to 30 minutes per feeding helps to ensure that the baby is getting enough breast milk.

Similar behavior is also seen in male lions, among other species, who also kill young cubs, thereby enabling them to impregnate the females. Unlike langurs, male lions live in small groups, which cooperate to take control of a pride from an existing group. The cubs lost their mother in February in the Ranthambore tiger reserve. According to the latest research , breastfeeding has benefits from the earliest hours right into adult life. It's associated with everything from better resistance to disease to healthier bodyweight, stronger academic performance to higher earnings.

The World Health Organization WHO recommends that all babies get only breast milk for the first six months of their life. And yet, only 38 percent of them do. Some countries have to work harder than others to convince and enable mothers to breastfeed. In many poorer countries, where breastfeeding rates are highest, the savings on baby food are a compelling reason on their own.

Other governments have gone all out to persuade women that breastfeeding is not only the healthiest option, but one that won't cost them their job — or their dignity. In honor of World Breastfeeding Week , we look at the countries that have done most to make breastfeeding easier, more comfortable and the norm. It's no surprise that a Scandinavian country tops the list of pro-boob places. Like its neighbors Sweden and Denmark, Norway is generous with parental leave: Mothers and fathers can take up to 49 weeks on full pay or 59 weeks on 80 percent pay.

That immediately helps remove one of the major barriers to exclusively breastfeeding babies for their first six months or more: going back to work. When women do return, they are entitled to nursing breaks throughout the workday for as long as they choose to breastfeed their child.

What's more, some 80 percent of Norway's maternity hospitals are certified " Baby Friendly " by UNICEF and the WHO, meaning that they refuse to accept free infant formula or bottle-feeding equipment from private companies and that staff are trained to help women to breastfeed right from within half an hour of the birth to several weeks after they've left the hospital. The result is the highest breastfeeding rate of any developed country : 99 percent of babies born in Norway are at least partially breastfed, 80 percent of them to six months or beyond.

Faced with high rates of malnutrition among its children, Peru's government has made breast milk a policy priority. Since the s there have been concerted efforts to train health workers to encourage breastfeeding and expand support availability, as well as a workplace code that entitles women to paid nursing breaks until their child is 12 months old. During this super-short nursing period, the pups can consume about By the time they are weaned, they are almost double in weight, researchers have found.

The high-fat diet helps the pups put on a thick layer of blubber that serves to insulate their bodies against the harsh, cold environment, says Amy Skibiel, a lactation expert at the University of Florida. By contrast, the black rhinoceros has the skimmest milk on the fat spectrum. A rhino mom produces milk that is watery and has only about 0.

This dilute milk may have something to do with the animals' slow reproductive cycle. Black rhinoceroses become capable of reproducing only once they reach four to five years old. They have long pregnancies that last for over a year, and they give birth to one calf at a time. Then they spend a considerable amount of time—almost two years—nursing their young.

Tammar wallabies , found in southern and western Australia, produce sugar-rich milk for their joeys. Their milk contains about 14 percent sugar, double the amount present in human milk and one of the highest levels among mammals. The types of sugars in their milk are different, too.

The predominant sugar in human milk is lactose—a sugar that breaks down into glucose and galactose. However, milk of the tammar wallabies has very little lactose in it , and instead consists of high levels of other complex sugars called oligosaccharides. Many marsupials, or pouched mammals, like tammar wallabies also have a unique way of controlling what goes into their milk depending on the ages of their young.

For example, a tammar wallaby mother could be suckling an older joey from one nipple and an infant joey still in her pouch from another nipple, and she can produce two different milks for each of them.