Even the sea monsters draw out the breast,.... Which some interpret of dragons; others of seals, or sea calves; but it is best to understand it of whales, as the word is rendered in Ge 1:21; and elsewhere: and Bochart has proved, out of various writers, that these have breasts and milk; but that their breasts, or however their paps, are not manifest, but are hid as in cases, and must be drawn out: and so Jarchi observes that they draw their breasts out of a case, for their breasts have a covering, which they uncover: so Ben Melech.
Aristotle says, that whales, as the dolphin, sea calf, and balaena, have breasts or paps, and milk, which he makes to be certain species of the whale; and each of these, he elsewhere says, have milk, and suckle their young: the dolphin and sturgeon, he observes have milk, and are sucked; and so the sea calf, he says , lets out milk as a sheep, and has two breasts, and is sucked by its young, as four footed beasts are.
Agreeably to which Aelianus relates, that the female dolphins have paps like women, and suckle their young, with great plenty of milk; and the balaena, he says , is a creature like a dolphin, and has milk.