Lock up your mammals, Dingus Khan are back with a bludgeoning rendition of their anthem to interspecies milking.

Dingus Khan’s World of Milk

Poetic licence takes many forms in popular song, but rarely can there have been a more unlikely boast than, “I drank the milk of every mammal!” According to the third edition of Mammal Species of the World (Wilson and Reeder 2005), there are 5416 mammal species in the world, of which 101 can be found on and around the British Isles. It would probably take a person several years and quite a lot of money to successfully sample the milk of every mammal, which is no doubt why nine out of every ten glasses of milk consumed by humans come from cows.

I caught up with Dingus Khan in the Colchester Zoo penguin enclosure to talk milk over a cup of salty yak milk tea. I started by asking them to talk a little about their favourite exotic milk...

Adam – Dayak fruit bat milk

Adam: The dayak fruit bat is a rare frugivorous megabat species found only southeast Asia, specifically the Malay Peninsula, south of the Isthmus of Kra. It’s the only known example of a mammal species with paternal lactation, meaning both male and female bats produce milk. This is great for fruit bat novices who might have difficulty working out the sex of a bat before milking.

Ben – Minke whale milk

Ben: People laugh when I talk about milking whales on an industrial scale, but whales produce 40 times more milk than the average Friesian and using whales for commercial milk production would free up agricultural land for more crops. I’ve trained a pod of minke whales to return to a milking bay in a Norwegian fjord, where they allow me to milk them in return for herring. Milking normally takes about 50 minutes and yields about 2800 pints of milk. I’m hoping one day to have a global monopoly on whale milk, but at the moment I have to throw most of it away.

Gaz – Platypus milk

Gaz: As you probably know, the platypus, like all monotremes, has no teats. You might think that would present a problem for milk-lovers, but it actually secretes milk directly from pores in its skin, which then collects in the hairy folds of its body. You can plunge your face directly into the animal’s belly and start licking. Be aware that the platypus is the world’s only venomous mammal, with toxic spurs on its hind limbs that can incapacitate an unwary milk enthusiast. So try not to make it angry.

Josh – Californian sea lion milk

Josh: In blind taste tests, most people can’t tell the difference between Californian sea lion milk and the milk of other marine mammals, but tests conducted in 1962 revealed it to be the only naturally occurring lactose-free mammalian milk. This is really exciting news for the lactose-intolerant interspecies milk connoisseur.

Tom - Mouse milk

Tom: The most efficient way of milking a mouse is to use a Pasteur pipette to generate a vacuum, aspirating milk from the mammary glands through the teat. I find gentle manual stimulation at the base of the teat improves the flow rate. It’s much more successful when performed by two people - one to restrain the mouse while the other collects the milk. This method consistently yields approximately 20 μl per gland, but is unfortunately fatal to the mouse. I feel bad that 5,000 mice have to die every day, just to produce enough milk for my cereal. I tried toast in the morning instead, but it didn’t fill me up.

Milk hazard: Mousemilk
Mousemilk™ is the trade name of a highly toxic industrial lubricant, available from online stockists. Despite its name, it is not a safe substitute for genuine mouse milk and should not be consumed in large quantities.

Mick – Emperor penguin milk

Mick: I guess milk, like any drug, can be addictive. You might start by squeezing a vole into a shot glass, but before you know what’s happening, you’re sharing a canteen of rancid pink hippo milk with a West African poacher. The problem for me started when I realised that I had drunk the milk of every mammal. Fortunately, I recently discovered bird milk. I’ve tried pigeon milk and flamingo milk, but my favourite at the moment is the milk of the male emperor penguin. I jab a stick down its throat and it regurgitates a thin, milky soup from its crop.

I don’t have an ethical problem with taking milk from penguins. Red-billed oxpeckers have been recorded perching on the udders of impalas to drink their milk. And, in Isla de Guadalupe, seagulls and sheathbills have been observed stealing the milk directly from the teats of elephant seals. Interspecies milking is commonplace in nature. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.