Reproduction
Northern water snakes mate from April through June. They are ovoviviparous (live-bearers), which means they do not lay eggs like many other snakes. Instead, the mother carries the eggs inside her body and gives birth to free living young, each one 19–23 cm (7.5–9.1 in) long. A female may have as many as thirty young at a time. They are born between August and October. Mothers do not care for their young; as soon as they are born, they are on their own.
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Famous quotes containing the word reproduction:
“The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“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)