What Breast Milk Ducts Look Like

Submission 28,375

About

What Breast Milk Ducts Look Like refers to the reaction to a photograph of the anatomical diagram of human breast milk ducts. However, some publications debunked the picture, stating that the image did not actually point to the milk ducts.

Origin

On October 26th, 2016, Imgur user Trolaw posted a screenshot from the iPad app "Anatomy & Physiology – anatomy of human body parts" of a diagram of the female anatomy. The post received more than 1,300 points and 45,000 views.^[5]^[6]

On April 21st, 2019, Twitter ^[1] user @lemonadead posted the image of the female muscle system that included the milk ducts. They captioned the post, "I just realized I never saw a photo of a female muscle system. This is NOT what I imagined milk ducts to look like." The post received more than 46,000 retweets and 139,000 likes in one week (shown below).

Spread

Following the post, people began sharing and commenting on the photograph. For example, Twitter^[2] user @mama_ashley_ tweeted, "This is what I mean when I say women are of the Earth. Literal flowers in our titties. Divinity." The tweet received more than 30,000 retweets and 122,000 likes in less than one week (shown below, left). Twitter^[3] user @EllieHGraham tweeted, "mental that you can actual feel that inside ur boob." The tweet received more than 6,500 retweets and 38,000 likes in one week (shown below, center).

Later that week, the BBC posted the image on their Instagram ^[4] page. The post received more than 198,000 likes in one week (shown below, right).

Several media outlets reported on the photograph, including PopBuzz,^[7] Women's Health,^[8] BBC^[9] and more. On April 26th, 2019, the website Science Alert^[10] stated that the image was incorrect. They write, "So, those flower-shaped things are definitely not ducts. They probably represent the lobules, except in a real human breast they are not arranged in such a neat pattern at all."