(More OT...) Why? I don't think so, really. Some of the stuff is fun, funny and interesting. Here is an excerpt and a link to one article:
Great thinkers,from Aristotle to Darwin,
have pondered this question.
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By Susan McCarthy
June 8, 1999 | Why do men have nipples? To prove they're mammals, obviously. The distinguishing features of mammals, from whales to mice, are two: having hair and suckling their offspring. This gives us the notorious sentence that demonstrates why our pronouns need overhauling: "Man is an animal who suckles his young."
Clearly, if men didn't have nipples, to demonstrate their theoretical membership in the La Leche League, we could only identify them as mammals by their hairiness. And where would that leave bald guys? What are they, reptiles?
There are some male mammals without nipples, a fact I was alerted to by Aristotle, who wrote "Such, for instance, is the case with horses, some stallions being destitute of these parts."
Since Aristotle's medical facts were sometimes a bit wobbly -- he said cabbage cures hangovers -- I called an equine veterinarian. "I have never seen a stallion with nipples," she declared flatly. "And I have looked around down there." As far as I know, she's never seen a bald stallion, either, so that's how they avoid being called reptiles.
The veterinarian pointed out that a mare's two nipples are located toward the tail end of the body, as opposed to the chic head-end location in humans. This, she daintily hinted, might be why stallions don't exhibit nipples. "There's no room."
These shocking facts sent me on a quest for other data on animal nipples or, as medical types have long preferred to say, mammae. Male nipples? Mammae masculinae. (If you need to be even more obscure you can also call a nipple a mamilla or a thelium.)
My mother, when I told her of my research, may have been hinting that there were more hard-hitting stories I could be working on by bringing up the folk analogy "as useless as tits on a boar hog." My research appears to indicate that boar hogs do in fact have tits. Which they are not known to use.
Not only do male platypuses not have nipples, neither do females. The milk simply flows out through pores and is licked up by baby platypuses. And while platypuses are not actually categorized as reptiles, you'll notice that people are always talking about how "primitive" they are and making fun of their noses.
More... (And this will conclude my participation in this fascinating discussion... -g):
salon.com |
