Underwater, sucking is impossible.
Blue whale calves do not have functional lips, and the vacuum that any land mammal uses to nurse simply does not exist in the ocean. So nature solved the problem another way: the mother contracts specialized muscles around the mammary gland and shoots the milk directly into her calf’s open mouth. There is no sucking. There is injection.
@cabronazi Blue whales produce milk as thick as toothpaste. When nursing their calves underwater, the milk contains 50% fat so it does not dissolve in the sea. This allows the calf to swallow it directly like a solid paste.#CapCut ♬ original sound – sun020576 – cherry
Nor is it just any milk. According to data from NOAA Fisheries and the reference study by Oftedal (1997) published in the Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia, blue whale milk contains between 35% and 50% fat —compared with 4% in human milk— and has a toothpaste-like consistency. It is no coincidence: a more watery liquid would dissolve in the sea before reaching the calf.
The whole process lasts only seconds. The calf opens its mouth, the mother activates the muscles, and with that lightning-fast transfer a blue whale calf can receive up to 600 liters of milk a day, gaining around 90 kilos every 24 hours.