Mating
Females normally produce their young when around 4 years old in England and 3 years old in the south of Europe, with males becoming mature around the end of their second year. Mating season is from autumn to spring, with nurseries of up to 200 females clustered together with their young. The maternity roosts are usually found in old buildings, occasionally caves or abandoned mines.
The babies are born in June or July. Each bat only has one baby. Young Greater Horseshoe Bats open their eyes at about 4 days, are able to fly after three weeks and become independent at 7–8 weeks, during August. The false nipples of female bats, which newborn bats cling to after birth, are not fully developed until after the first birth.
Read more about this topic: Greater Horseshoe Bat
Famous quotes containing the word mating:
“The far-off clinching and mating of arches, the leap and thrust of the stone, carrying a great roof overhead, awed and silenced her.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The elephant, not only the largest but the most intelligent of animals, provides us with an excellent example. It is faithful and tenderly loving to the female of its choice, mating only every third year and then for no more than five days, and so secretly as never to be seen, until, on the sixth day, it appears and goes at once to wash its whole body in the river, unwilling to return to the herd until thus purified. Such good and modest habits are an example to husband and wife.”
—St. Francis De Sales (1567–1622)
“He’s one of those know-it-all types that, if you flatter the wig off him, he chatter like a goony bird at mating time.”
—Michael Blankfort. Lewis Milestone. Johnson (Reginald Gardner)