MAMMALS OF THE REGION 119 



diameter; on May 22, 15 mm. in diameter; and on 

 June 13, 22 by 17 mm. in long and short diameters. At 

 the last mentioned time the young was practically 

 ready for birth and weighed 3.6 grams, while the mother 

 weighed 13.6 grams, or approximately four times as 

 much as the foetus. The birth of these young, fully a 

 quarter as heavy as the mother, would not be possible 

 but for the open, low, and widely separated pelvic bones 

 of the female bat. Even then it is scarcely conceivable 

 that she could give birth to so large a young one, com- 

 parable to a 35-pound child of a human parent. 



After birth the young bats cling to the mother and 

 are carried about even while she is on the wing in pur- 

 suit of her insect food. Her two nipples are conven- 

 iently placed on the sides of her breast well around un- 

 der the wings, and as the mother hangs head downward 

 during the day, the young are cradled in the armpits 

 just below the nipples. Whether the young are carried 

 until old enough to fly and catch their own food is not 

 well known, but they develop rapidly and begin to fly 

 before they are full-grown. But much, remains to be 

 learned of the breeding habits of all bats. 



The general attitude that bats are "horrid," "vile," 

 "venomous," "emblems of the infernal regions," and 

 that "they get into your hair" is mere folk lore, based 

 on ignorance and passed on from generation to genera- 

 tion. To most people a bat is a bat, and they have no 

 realization that there are numerous families and genera 

 and species, differing as widely as do the species in any 

 other order of mammals, and perhaps more widely, and 

 that they belong to one of the most highly specialized 



