Reproduction
Short-tailed bats are lek breeders, with males occupying individual mating roosts during the breeding season and using repetitive ultrasonic calls to attract females. The males also mark the entrances to their mating roosts with an oily secretion produced in scent glands on the throat; the oil has a musky odour, and may help to attract the females. Mating most commonly takes place between February and May.
After mating, the embryo enters a state of delayed implantation through the winter, so a single young is born in the summer. Newborn bats are hairless, but otherwise well-developed, and weigh just 5 g (0.18 oz). The permanent teeth erupt at three weeks, and the young are fully furred and able to fly by four weeks of age. They leave the maternal roost at six weeks, and grow rapidly; they are fully grown within three months.
Read more about this topic: New Zealand Lesser Short-tailed Bat
Famous quotes containing the word reproduction:
“Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “Artist.””
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“The atmosphere parents wish to create when talking with children about birth and reproduction is warm, honest, and reassuring, one that tells children they are free to ask questions as often as they need to, and you will answer them as lovingly as you know how.”
—Joanna Cole (20th century)
“Although Samuel had a depraved imagination—perhaps even because of this—love, for him, was less a matter of the senses than of the intellect. It was, above all, admiration and appetite for beauty; he considered reproduction a flaw of love, and pregnancy a form of insanity. He wrote on one occasion: “Angels are hermaphrodite and sterile.””
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)