In the defense of the ancients who were naming things like other things they sort of looked like.... what OTHER substance was around at that time that was both white and liquid?
...
Because maybe we should be grateful for the milk metaphor instead of the option that only nuts would choose...
In German and Dutch it's way worse: "Säugetier" and "zoogdier". Both can roughly be translated to "sucking animals". I was taught in school that it's called that because babies suck on the mother's breasts to be fed and this is a unique trait to mammals. So in conclusion, we all suck.
That metaphor (breasts as fruit) transcends language though. Whatever you call fruits you'll end up calling breasts. Here's the song of Solomon which was semetic.
I said, ‘I will go up to the palm tree; I will take hold of the boughs thereof.’ Now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples.
Instead of viewing things like this etymologically, it's better to see them as universal metaphors that transcend language and culture. Similar to light and darkness.
Ackshully, "galaxy" (or rather, "galaxias") means "Milky Way" already, it's just a translation. It was less ambiguous when the only galaxy we could see was the Milky lights that covered a lot of our sky.
Of course, we realize there's more than one galaxy now, so the meanings have diverged.
I mean... I think we can all agree that boobs are at least universally non-threatening, even without counting the symbolisms of nourishment, nurturance, life, fertility, etc. At least I don't think we're at the point where hiding machine guns or hellish snakes in boobs is viable. ... Right?
synapsids have a single temporal fenestra, an opening low in the skull roof behind each eye socket, leaving a bony arch beneath each; this accounts for the name "synapsid"
We're the only(?) species that have evolved them to become more than their basic function. Other species use colors and other features for mating signals, humans use shapes. Definitely wired to be interested in them.
Hold up, are other hominids interested in boobs? Any other mammal? Any non mammals into boobs? How much tiddy science have we really done here?
I need tiddy facts.
This might be pseudoscience I got taught 20 years ago, but I have been under the impression that human evolution of breasts as a secondary sexual characteristic has to do with the shift to becoming bipedal. Like a lot of animals, early hominids would see the rear end of a fellow hominid and know this as a trigger for copulation. But when homo erectus started standing upright, butts weren't so universally erotic anymore. They had a whole back and head above them now. Breasts didn't need to be very large to fill their function, but an increase in size gave them a curvy appearance similar to a set of butt cheeks. And early humans were like, yeah, I think that's right, and selected for increased (or at least variable) breast size.
I'm not aware of any other species sexually selecting for mammary size. Some birds do a puffy chest thing.
It might be a learned association rather than anything instinctive about tiddies. There's this one study where they gave rats a backpack fetish, but it has a sad ending because then they murdered all the rats. They did phrase the murder like they were doing a Satanic ritual though, and that kind of took some of the murdery edge off it for me.
I've been looking forward to like 20 years from now when all the incels will be into girls with too many fingers.
Tiddy loving might be a cultural thing. Human species that don't need clothes care little for the boobs. Though they live south, so either they are used to it or it might be Neanderthal(or other varieties) genes that some of us inherited. We certainly are boob fetishists among the mammals.
A while back I imagined a race of intelligent crocodiles that not only ate their own young, they'd cooktyhem and serve them to honored guests as a sign of respect.
i mean i'm not sure what definition you go by, to me the most sensible definition would be "a nutritious liquid produced by the parent to feed the child in its infancy", for which there's actually quite a few other classes that qualify. Many birds have crop milk which is exactly what it sounds like, and apparently some jumping spiders secrete milk from the same place as the eggs come out.
I suppose you could argue that milk must be modified sweat, but that feels very much like actively narrowing it down to only count mammals. It's not like there's anything inherent to how our milk is produced, all that matters is that it's a nutritious liquid.