Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Ask a question, get an answer


One of the wonders of the Internet is that you can conceive a question that previously would have taken a trip to the library and several encyclopedias to answer (if it was answerable at all), and get the answer in a couple of minutes.

Thus, when my brilliant yet skewed cerebellum conceived the following:

"How many milk ducts does the female breast nipple have?"

I could then commence searching, and very quickly ascertain the following answer:

"Nestled amid the fat cells and glandular tissue [of the breast] are the milk ducts, an intricate network of channels. Pregnancy hormones cause the milk ducts to grow in number and size.

The ducts branch off into smaller channels near the chest wall called ductules. At the end of each ductule is a cluster of small, grapelike sacs called alveoli. A cluster of alveoli is called a lobule; a cluster of lobules is called a lobe. Each breast contains between 15 and 20 lobes, with one milk duct for every lobe."

So there's the answer to the question.   And I even found a diagram (below).  So now you know what I know now.

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