80 Whitaker: Notes on the Breeding Habits of Bats. 
was made by the bat with widely open mouth ; and after calling 
for a time, it would set off on a searching expedition for the 
mother, crawling slowly, but with a firm grip of anything to 
which it could cling, and keeping up the search with great 
perseverance until it was successfully ended. The youngsters 
seemed to recognise their own mothers easily, and would take 
little or no notice of the wrong parent. When one was looking 
for its mother, and got near to her, it would grab hold with its 
mouth of any part of her it could catch. If the mother happened 
to be busy feeding at the time, she would often take no notice 
of it, but drag it carelessly about with her, whilst it clung with 
a kind of dogged perseverance to the fur of her back, her 
interfemoral membrane, or any part of her which it happened to 
have got hold. Whenever the adult bat paused, the youngster 
would try to improve its grip, and work into a safer and more 
comfortable position, and eventually it would manage to squirm 
either over the mother’s shoulder or under her interfemoral 
membrane, and so get under her wing ; when this was the case, 
the mother would nearly always bend her head under her wing, 
and apparently tuck the young one into a mutually comfortable 
position, and at such times the young one could be heard 
making a very soft, but rather musical, twittering. 
After the mothers had fed, they always used-to suckle their 
respective young ones immediately. If ‘baby’ were under the 
wing of one of them when she came out to feed, it did not seem 
to hamper her movements seriously until it came to ‘ pouching’ 
a mealworm, but this operation—always difficult for a bat to 
perform on Zerra firma—the presence of the young one seemed 
to render ten times more difficult. 
In case some readers of this article are unaware of what is 
meant by the term ‘pouching,’ a short digression may be 
pardoned, in order to make the term clear. 
Bats secure the insects they feed upon in a natural state 
whilst they are on the wing, and as the ‘gape’ of a bat is 
comparatively small, and many of the insects fairly large and 
strong, it is not the easiest matter for a bat to secure a firm 
grip of its prey until its struggles are overcome. To avoid the 
risk of losing their captures owing to this difficulty, these 
creatures have acquired a curious habit. When they have 
seized an insect, and whilst they are still flying, they bend the 
hind legs and tail forward under the body, and then bend their 
heads down into the bag of skin thus formed by the membrane 
connecting the legs, tail, and wings. The insect is then in a 
Naturalist, 
