Overview
- University of Oulu researchers tested 27 volunteers in a climate chamber at 32°C, 27°C and 18°C using thermal imaging.
- Breastfeeding women showed higher breast surface temperatures and greater resistance to cooling than non-breastfeeding women and men.
- Average mammary surface cooling was about 2.5°C in nursing mothers versus roughly 4.3–4.7°C in the two control groups.
- The team argues that breast morphology provides a broad skin-to-skin contact area that could facilitate heat transfer to newborns.
- The peer-reviewed paper in Evolutionary Human Sciences is presented as preliminary, and the authors call for larger and cross-species studies.