Nursery
In zoology, the maternity room is the quarter in which the pregnant females of the bats come together and in which they give birth to their young.
Reproduction of bats
Most species of bats give birth to a single cub only once a year. The mating often takes place in the winter quarters, with the males in heat choosing the females from the animals that usually hang in groups. They clasp them with their wings and bite them in the neck to wake them up. As soon as the female is easily awakened, it is mated by the male. After the sexual act, both animals look for a place to sleep again. In this way, a female can be mated several times by different males during hibernation.
The egg cell is fertilized not immediately after mating, but only after the end of hibernation. This prevents the female from losing too much energy during pregnancy and the young animals from being born in the cold season. The semen of the males can be kept in the reproductive tract of the females for several months; the fetus only begins to grow in the uterus when the weather is favorable. The gestation period can vary between 40 and 70 days.
The nursery
The pregnant females come together in the summer in nurseries, in which the young are born and raised together. These nurseries usually contain 20 to 50 dams, depending on the species, but can also contain up to 1,000 animals. Unlike the males, who sleep during the day in the summer roosts, the females do not fall into daytime lethargy , as this delays the development of the fetus. The births usually take place during the day and immediately after the birth, the young animals climb up on the mother and suckle on a teat.
The young animals stay in the nursery for the evening flight. The mothers leave them in their quarters, where they hang together with other abandoned young animals in larger groups and form grapes. In this way, the young animals warm each other (social thermoregulation ). After the flight, each mother recognizes her young by means of voice feel and smell and attaches it to her teats to suckle.
The young animals develop rapidly, the young animals are already capable of flight at three to four weeks of age and after five to six weeks they are weaned by the mother . From the end of August, the boys are abandoned by their mothers and a short time later they find themselves in the winter quarters.
literature
- W. Schober and E. Grimmberger (eds.): The bats of Europe. 2nd Edition. Kosmos, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-440-07597-4
