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Imagine feeding your baby a milkshake for every meal.
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Well, for hooded seal pups, that's nothing.
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Their mothers' milk contains 60％ fat, the fattiest milk in the world.
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For comparison, the richest ice cream clocks in at only 16％ fat.
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And after just 3 to 5 days guzzling the stuff, seal pups double their body weight.
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But seals aren't the only animals with extreme milk.
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If hooded seals drink the fattiest milk, then tammar wallabies prefer their milk loaded with sugar.
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It can contain as much as 12% sugar, more than a glass of Coca-Cola, and for good reason.
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Joeys are born prematurely and finish developing outside the womb.
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And since sugars are easier to digest than fat, their milk is easier on their developing digestive systems.
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Meanwhile, the milk also contains an antibiotic more powerful than penicillin,
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which protects the young joeys from germs since they're born without a fully functioning immune system.
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Meanwhile, aardvark milk doesn't contain much sugar, but it makes up for it with extreme levels of protein.
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While cow's milk has a measly 3 to 4% protein, aardvark milk can contain over 13%, making it among the highest-protein milks on earth, giving calves enough nutrition to reach 30% of their adult weight in just three months.
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But while aardvarks have some pretty potent milk, nine-banded armadillos make some special stuff of their own.
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By the time the pups are a month old, they're drinking milk that contains 10 times as much calcium as cow's milk.
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All this calcium helps the pups develop those famous armor shells, which are actually made of bone.
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Next up, flamingos.
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That's right, flamingos.
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Like most birds, they feed their chicks by vomiting directly into their mouths,
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but that food isn't made of the day's catch.
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Instead, it consists of a substance called crop milk, because it's stored in the parents' crop.
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And flamingos are one of only three birds that can produce this stuff.
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But even among our feathered friends, flamingo crop milk is special because it's pink.
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That's because the pigments that give flamingos their brilliant coloring leach out of their feathers and into the milk.
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Now, all this milk might sound like the next health-food craze, but there's a good reason we generally stick to plain old cattle.
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They're much easier to milk.
