Just thought I'd share my thoughts on an interesting article from the Chicago Tribune Metro Section on the front page: "Mom's - and Grandma's - boy - and subtitle: Milk holds key to research. In summary, the article starts out talking about two female bottlenose dolphins at the Brookfield Zoo, mother and daughter, both introduced about a year ago to 2 male dophins. Both female dophins became pregnant and the zoo had hoped they would deliver about the same time so the younger of the two could learn "tricks of mothering" from watching the mother. Well, it turned out the older dophin delivered a stillborn in early October (both due in December) and the younger dophin (the daughter of the older) delivered October 18. Mom of calf supposedly did not do what she needed to do to care and nurse this calf and zoo keepers became concerned about calf's health and safety. In the meantime, grandma did show proper mothering to this calf, so they separated mom from grandma and baby. Biologists took this opportunity to examine the first-time mother's milk, suspecting the milk may hold clues to the reason why so few calves of first-time dolphin mothers survive. This is supposedly the first time these biologists will have ever looked at levels of toxins first-time mother bottlenose dolphins might be passing to their calves. Interesting. Well....they've returned mom to the tank with grandma and baby and mom has been guiding the calf to nurse and zoo keepers think it may stimulate her to relactate...I'm confused. If anyone else read this article, set me straight please, for I would venture a guess that the first time mother's milk was found to contain high levels of toxins due to the fish they eat...however, I don't see where they could state (if they do - which they probably will)that this baby would not have survived due to his mother's milk being contaminated. Or are there levels of toxins which these mother dolphins could have that would definitely mean the calf would die? What about failing to survive due to the fact this young mother never observed mothering before due to captivity irregardless of the amount of contamination in her milk? While if doing this research we'd see all the more reason to clean up the environment and see the importance of generations passing on "mothering ways" - great. I'm just worried it'll be something else - and then we human mothers...well that's another story however connected in many ways. *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html