Currently Reading - Eve
I'm currently reading Eve by Cat Bohannon. It's an overview of the evolutionary history of mammals/humans through womens bodies. It picks various "Eve's", animals who were possibly the first women depending on different views of what makes a woman.
As someone who hasn't read into biology or evolutionary history much since GCSE's, I'm finding this deeply interesting.
At the moment, I'm onto the development of mammals who produced milk, the first example of which is a mouse the size of a human thumb who sweat it out of their skin! The book has gone on to discuss the numerous functions of milk. Did you know that when a child drinks milk, the breast absorbs their saliva and uses its chemical composition to detect their emotional state and any illnesses or specific nutritional deficiencies and on-the-fly alters the composition of the milk it produces to provide anti-bodies, calming hormones or the needed nutrients??
It turns out milk is a deeply complex system which actually does much more than just provide nutrients and we're only just starting to scratch the surface of its functions. Two more examples:
The first milk produced by a mother clears out a babies digestive tract and plants the initial bacterial colonies that run digestion!
The average emotional state of a breast feeding mother will go on to alter a childs personality for the rest of their life. Higher stress hormones in milk produce more timid and careful children, lower stress hormones produce more explorative and experimental children. You can really see how this helps alter our entire societies behaviours to prioritise survival when needed and development when its safe!
Its truly fascinating, especially to me, a trans woman who has some part of the female anatomy (e.g. breasts that can produce milk) but not others (e.g. a womb). Expect a full report soon!