in Honor of Mothers Great and Small:
A Brazilian free-tailed bat mom with her new born pup, still attached by the umbilical cord. Once the placenta is expelled, it will gradually dry up and fall up after 24 hours. Her pup is nursing in the second photo.
Free-tails are insectivores and they only have only one pup per year. When these pups are born they are 1/3 the size of the mother (the equivalent of a 120 lb woman having a 40lb baby). Not only does the mother have to fly and forage for enough food to keep herself and her unborn fetus nourished, she has it even rougher after her baby is born. She has to keep her own weight up while also making enough milk to feed a baby that will be full grown within 8 weeks. In the last two-weeks before her pup is weaned, she will be nursing a bat as big as she is.
Free-tails eat an enormous amount of insects each night, including harmful moths, flying ants, flying termites, mosquitoes, and beetles. Each bat is capable of eating up to 5,000 flying insects per night. A mother free-tail caring for her baby must eat double that amount (10,000 insects) per night just to keep herself and her baby alive.
Once her baby is full grown and on it's own -if allowed to live a normal lifespan of 20 years- it will consume over 35 million harmful insects during that time.
Free-tailed bats are not only critical to our environment, they are highly emotional creatures. They are as smart (if not smarter) than dolphins, have at least 25 vocalizations they use to communicate, and they even use syntax. A mother bat who loses her baby will grieve outwardly with mournful cries for days afterward. Some mothers, suffering the loss of a baby, will try to steal another mother's baby, and some mothers will allow a mother who has lost her pup to share in caring for her own pup.
— at Bat World Sanctuary.
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Wed May 08, 2013 7:56 pm
