Page 157 - For Men of Understanding

No female becomes tre long. When it is 190 days old, it has grown mature
pregnant or gives enough to make its first journey outside the pouch. From
birth except with His then on, it starts to spend most of its time outside the
knowledge. And no pouch and leaves the pouch for good on the 235th day
living thing lives
after its birth.
long or has its life
Soon after the birth of its second offspring, the female
cut short without
copulates again. Consequently, the female has three off-
that being in a Book.
That is easy for spring all dependent on her. The first can feed on grass
Allah. but occasionally comes back to its mother to suckle; the
(Surah Fatir: 11) second younger offspring is still developing by suckling;
the third is the neonate, which is the youngest.
What is more astonishing than that all three offspring, each in a different
stage of development, are dependent on the mother, is that all three offspring
are fed by different types of milk according to their sizes.
While the milk the offspring suckles as soon as it reach-
es the nipple in the pouch is transparent and colourless, it
increasingly turns whiter and starts to look like real milk. The
amount of fat and other ingredients in the milk increases in
parallel with the development of the baby.
As this young one keeps on suckling the milk prepared
for its own needs, a more easily digestible milk issues from
the nipple that the second baby reaches. Thus, the body of
the mother simultaneously produces two types of milk with
different ingredients. When the third is born, the number of
milk types produced with different ingredients becomes
three: highly nutritious milk for the older, and relatively less
fatty and nutritious types of milk for the younger. Another
point to note here is that each offspring finds the nipple spe-
cially prepared for itself. Otherwise, it would suckle milk
with an ingredient likely to be harmful to its body, and the
milk it suckles would harm it.
This feeding system is very remarkable and it is obvious-
ly a special product of creation. The mother cannot, by any
means, arrange all these consciously. How can an animal
specify the ingredients of milk needed by its young of differ-
ent sizes? Even if it did, how could it produce it in its own
body? How could it distribute these through three different
channels?
Doubtless, the kangaroo is not capable of doing any of
these. It is not even aware that the milk delivered by its body
is of three different types. This wonderful process is unques-
tionably an outcome of Allah's superior creation.

The Signs in Living Things 155