eli5: do boobs actually hold liquid milk or are they like camel humps?
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Boobs are mostly bags of fat and blood vessels along with specialized structures called mammary glands, whose main function is milk production. Hormones that a women’s body produces in response to pregnancy are responsible for milk secretion from the glands.
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Neither of those.
A camel’s hump is made of fat and contains nutrient. Basically, it’s a thick grease with nourishing elements inside. When the camel needs energy, that fat is burned the same way any fat is burned like when, say, an obese person stops eating.
A woman’s breast contains several little things called “mammary glands”. Those produce the milk that they exude, they “sweat” milk. There are pipes, called “ducts” linking these glands to the nipple, ending in a single pipe which itself ends in the nipple. *Edit : as one redditor replied, the nipple itself doesn’t end in a duct, there is no tube running through it like there is, say, in a penis : it’s simply a porous bit of meat which lets milk flow through.*
So it’s not really a bag full of liquid and rather more like a sponge next to a pipe. The milk is produced inside this sponge by using food : elements the woman’s body already contains because she ate them are used to produce the milk, which is made of water, fat and proteins *edit : and sugar ! Very important*. There isn’t much capacity inside the breast to contain the milk, it is rather a direct process : milk is produced and expelled from the body. Women who do not have something to suck the milk out can feel pain because of this and a stale, inedible kind of cream cheese is then stuck inside the breast, which must be expelled before it rots.
This sponge, the mammary glands, are woken up by a kind of message inside the body. This “wake-up !” message is brought to them by hormones, which are special liquids flowing in our bodies to give our organs messages : there is a hormone to tell you to feel good, a hormone to tell you to feel hungry, a hormone to tell you that you need to flush because there’s too much sugar in your blood, and of course a hormone to tell a woman’s breast to produce milk. This hormone is called “prolactin”.
Interestingly, another one, “oxytocin”, is also used for lactation and this hormone is the “well-being” hormone, the hormone which makes us happy.
Both. There are two main organs that make up the boobs. One is just a big blob of fat, just like a camel hump. This makes up most of the boobs. The other organ is the mammary gland which primarily lies under the fat. It is sort of a long coiled up tube which can produce milk. When inactive the mammary gland is empty. But when producing milk it does fill the tube with some milk. So it is producing milk all day long and just stores it up for feeding.
The same organs are actually also found in men. The main difference is that normally the fat does not accumulate in a mans boobs, although fat men can often have just as big boobs as normal weight women. But the mammary gland is just the same, it is just harder to get a mans mammary gland to start producing milk without the hormones associated with pregnancy.
Camel humps are fat. The reason they have fat disproportionately on their backs is because fat acts as an insulator, see how some animals use it as primary insulation like seals. Think of this like a puffer jacket where the puffs are snacks. You need to carry the snacks with you hiking, but if it’s hot then wearing the jacket is going to overheat you. You can carry less snacks so you stay cooler but you don’t have as much food with you, or you can put the jacket in a backpack and carry that so you still have all your snacks. Camels went for the backpack method. Another animal that did this is fat-tailed sheep, though they store fat in their haunches instead of on their back.
Breasts are where humans store their mammary glands. All mammals have some sort of mammary tissue that produces milk, and various structures around it. Echidna don’t even have a nipple and instead appear to ‘sweat’ milk right through the skin. Others have explained mammary tissue more in depth! There are various theories as to why humans store fat around mammary tissue to form breasts, and to the best of my knowledge there’s not one clear answer.
If I was actually explaining this to my five year old, I would say that breasts are mainly fat with some muscle in them along with parts that make and transport milk called ducts. The ducts aren’t like one big chamber—it’s more like a twisting tunnel system with many starting points. Those paths lead to the nipple, which has more than one opening at the tip (like a very tiny sprinkler system). So yeah, when someone is nursing, the liquid milk is basically made in these ducts. It makes the breasts feel firmer and fuller. And after a baby nurses (or the milk is pumped out), then breasts will feel softer for a while. Depending on how old the baby (or toddler) is, this cycle will repeat every few hours or so. When a duct gets clogged or infected, that leads to mastitis which is an awful condition that can turn into a serious health issue.
Boobs are made of fat and milk glands. Most of the time, they do not contain milk. During lactation, the milk glands produce and hold liquid milk.
The breasts are mostly fat tissue, but they also contain milk producing glands called lobules. These are deep in the breast tissue. Lobules are a cluster of small sacs called alveoli (where milk is stored). Moving toward the nipple, alveoli transition to small channels (tubes) called ductules, which form larger channels called milk ducts. These end up in the nipple.
You can think of the milk ducts as individual straws, some of which merge so that anywhere from 8-14 end at the tip of the nipple to deliver milk to the baby.
The breasts produce milk from water and nutrients removed from the bloodstream. The milk is stored in the alveoli. When the baby (or pump) sucks, creating a vacuum, along with the release of a hormone, milk is pushed down the ducts and out the nipple.
If milk is not removed, it is reabsorbed from the body. If there’s a large amount of milk, it can cause engorgement (a really painful fullness in the breast) that can cause plugged ducts. If not treated (usually through warm compresses, massage, etc) it can lead to an infection called mastitis.
Fun fact milk in part is filtered blood, specifically the lipids, proteins and electrolytes.
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