Orca milk smells dizzyingly fishy. Seal milk has a wealthy orange hue. Reindeer milk, maybe fittingly, is as thick as eggnog. Not that I’m tempted to attempt it, or any of the opposite uncommon milks I can see stacked on cabinets from ground to ceiling. I’ve donned a puffy winter jacket and stepped contained in the freezer that homes the most important assortment of animal milk on the earth, containing that of all the pieces from tree shrews to two-toed sloths and big anteaters.

The gathering, housed at Smithsonian’s Nationwide Zoo in Washington DC, is greater than a cupboard of curiosities – it’s a crucial useful resource for employees at this zoo and others all over the world tasked with feeding orphaned infants. By finding out all this white – and not-so-white – stuff, Smithsonian scientists can create customized toddler formulation that can give the animals of their care the very best begin in life.

As their understanding of milk has improved, nonetheless, they’ve realised that their formulation are lacking an essential element: microbes. Now, as they discover the microbial range contained in numerous milks and the advantages these organisms convey, they’re striving to copy this in lab-made milk – not solely to raised help younger animals within the zoo, but in addition to help the survival of among the rarest species within the wild.

“The target isn’t essentially to freeze milk, archive it…