Kingfisher & Wombat: No, god help us, it was two other people and two other species.

I don't usually Quote-Post, but I think it might be the only way for me to get my point across given the replies. So there is no real way to know if a squirrel has rabies if anyone nearby has been feeding animals? (To be clear, I am mostly trying to feed birds, but squirrels eat the same shit.)

Squirrels who are particularly habituated to people, say by being fed regularly, can and do get aggressive without being rabid

No you'll know. Rabies turns the brain into swiss cheese and has very distinct impacts on an animal's ability to walk normally etc. Recommend searching YouTube for rabies videos so you can see what it looks like by the time agression sets in. The animal does not look normal.

So Gregory Peck's "To Kill A Mockingbird" was kinda true to life? That said, I probably misread that "not behaving normally" part to include getting closer to people. I did understand that poor physical control was a sign.

Watching rabies videos is both horrifying and very reassuring because an actively rabid animal in the aggressive stages is not gonna pass for a habituated one, at all.

It almost feels like a visceral response, to witness a rabid animal. Like we're programmed to be like "Oh fuck no" when we see that.

Rabies has been around long enough that this may actually be plausible.

There's video out there of a man in the late stages of rabies. Do not recommend unless you want nightmares.

Yeah, I’m an RVS wildlife rehabber. I’ve seen enough of that sort of stuff for one lifetime.

I used to do wildlife rehab in a state where our primary rabies vector was bats. One summer we had *two different incidents* where a Good Sam brought us an injured bat that they had been *letting crawl around on their bare chest* and feeding breastmilk.

You or someone else told me this awhile ago and I am still not fully recovered.

No, god help us, it was two other people and two other species.

How is this a thing.

It’s the stealing a harbor seal to breastfeed it that really breaks me. I mean, ok, at least the others were horribly misguided Good Samaritans, but TAKING A SEAL?!

Many uninformed people think the babies are abandoned when mom has just gone off to feed. NOAA does a ton of education trying to help people understand the babies are fine. (Weirdly proud that I managed to horrify YOU.)

Listen, I only write fictional horrors. An actual human person…well, ok, I appreciate that they meant well, I guess, but also WHY GOD WHY

I knew someone who had once participated in a program protecting Monk Seals in Hawaii. They would beach to digest, and well meaning people would not realize that seals are not fish or whales and are fine on land. They would push the seals into the water and if they had fed recently it could be bad.

So his job was basically to watch for a seal to come up, go set up caution tape around it and sit in a beach chair nearby reading until it woke up and went back to the ocean.

I mean, it’s a shame it’s needed, but also nice work if you can get it.

We may have been a little overzealous in our Breast is Best campaigns, but to be fair we did not realize we would need to specify that this was within species.

I was introduced once to a woman that breast-fed a litter of pups. Not with a breast pump and eyedropper type situation, but straight from the tap.

😳😳😳

Yup.

It’s like they want to do a reverse Mowgli

Surely the seal will take them to have adventures or…um…something…

Maybe this is just an urge mammals have. See a baby, must feed, species be damned

Speak for yourself, mammal!

I've seen a decent number of "cat adopts [animal]" videos. Not just mammals to nurse; I think I've seen at least one chick.

NO BUT FOR REAL, THIS IS NOT HOW YOU MAKE SELKIES, WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?

I'm a mammal and yeah nahhhh

Sorry, my brain keeps coming back to the line "The mechanic told me I'd blown a seal. I told him "just fix the damn thing and leave my personal life out of it"."

It gets awkward when the seal realizes it’s not human in preschool

I think more people want to believe they are Disney Princesses than actually have Disney Princess powers.

I think they've been watching the wrong Disney movies if they think breastfeeding an apex predator is a good idea.

maybe most humans run a lot more on hormones and instinct than they believe themselves to lactating predators will frequently nurse orphaned prey animals, probably humans do it too, not rationality, just vibes

Do you know a good article about this? I'd love to read about it

Wait, wut?!?

WHAT THE FUCK WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP TRYING TO BREASTFEED NONHUMAN ANIMALS? And not even always baby ones, either. What is with that??? I am in crisis.

*helpless arm waving*

[PTERODACTYL SCREECH?!?!?!?!?!]

Seriously, just go breastfeed adults who will pay you for doing so, if you need to share your, ugh, *bounty* that badly.

Plus you get paid! The bat doesn't want it and won't offer anything in return.

well it might offer terrifying diseases

Tori Amos’s liner art for Boys For Pele had an outsized influence?

Thinking of all the low level colds I got from my kid while breastfeeding and trying to fathom another species You really are immune system-ing for two That sounds, potentially, survival of humanity level bad

If the next zoonotic plague jumps species because somebody breastfed a raccoon or a bat or something, I might just give up and let it take me. I’m not a nihilist by nature, but where do you even go from there?

Aside from the grossness/danger, human milk is not the same as other mammals, it's not ok to give it to them, you are not the All-Mother Nature-Nourishing Goddess because you can lactate, put that boob away. Sheesh.

I can't help but think it would probably give the bats wicked bad indigestion. I'm sure the fat content is totally different from ... y'know. Insects.

Dunno about the bats, but a seal would starve on it, since as I recall, the fat content in seal milk is absurdly high.

You have to put a seal on one and a bat on the other to even things out

If there were truly sea cows, the prospect of their dairy products is very interesting.

You know, if a normal person popped that fact out I would be rather concerned, but from you? A little less.

I enjoyed this timeline juxtaposition.

Doubt anyone has tried to breast feed an elephant seal, but their milk is 70% fat.

There’s a wild amount of variation among mammals, but yes, seal milk is like 60% fat.

So skim it first? Maybe make butter to smooth on the fragile baby bat skin?

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