“Breast-Feeding of Animals by Women: Its Socio-Cultural Context and Geographic Occurrence”, 1982 (; backlinks; similar):
In this paper, the practice of women breast-feeding animals is viewed from a geographic and historical perspective. The principal aims are to establish where the practice has been commonplace, to determine its economic and socio-cultural context, to consider its possible role in animal domestication, and to weigh its importance in human ecology.—In many cases, the practice is an expression of affection for pets (among Polynesians, among forest peoples of tropical South America, and especially among aboriginal hunters and gatherers in Southeast Asia, Australia, and Tasmania). In other cases, affection is supplemented or supplanted by economic concerns, as among various Melanesian “pig complex” peoples. In some cases, breast-feeding of animals is linked to cult and ritual, an outstanding example being the nursing of cubs in connection with the Ainu bear cult. In a few cases, animals are breast-fed with the welfare of the human mother or child being of greatest concern. The conclusion is drawn that animal nursing may indeed have contributed to the domestication of such animals as the pig and dog, and that in some places, particularly lowland New Guinea, the practice can play an important role in human ecology.
[Keywords: breast-feeding of animals, ecology, animal domestication, animal cult]
…This initial survey of the practice of breast-feeding of animals by humans leads us to three general conclusions about the practice. First, we note that virtually all contemporary human groups reported as regularly nursing animals belong to cultures which either possess no dairy animals or, if they do, do not milk them. Second, we note the importance of animal-nursing as a taming mechanism used by some human groups who capture infant animals in the wild, and suggest that animal-nursing may have contributed to the full domestication of such often-captured pets as the dog and the pig, Sauer’s “household” animals. Finally and most tentatively, we conclude that the practice of animal-nursing, particularly in areas such as New Guinea where human breastmilk production is low, may at times pose a health threat to human infants who must compete with animals at the breast.