NOW TRY AND GET US TO GO BACK TO WORK:

Strange but True: Males Can Lactate: Unless you are an Indonesian fruit bat, though, it probably won't happen naturally (Nikhil Swaminathan, 2/08/07, Scientific American)

In late 2004 the Internet Movie Database reported that Dustin Hoffman suddenly had the urge to breast-feed. Had the then-67-year-old Hoffman--who brought mainstream culture face to face with autism in Rain Man and went mano a mano with an Ebola-like filovirus in Outbreak--never quite broken character from his 1982 film Tootsie? Nope. He was just really keen to help out with his first grandchild.

Interestingly, he could have possibly lent a helping, er, breast, if he had held the suckling newborn to his nipples for a couple weeks--although he could also have tried starving himself or taking a medication that would affect his brain's pituitary gland.

There have been countless literary descriptions of men miraculously breast-feeding, from The Talmud to Tolstoy, where, in Anna Karenina, there is a short anecdote of a baby suckling an Englishman for sustenance while on board a ship. The little anthropological evidence documented suggests it is possible.