Ecologist Rodrigo Medellin set up remote cameras in a bat “nursery.” The cameras capture a behavior that has never been filmed before: a mother giving birth.
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TRANSCRIPT
- [Narrator] It's a long night, watching through the many hours recorded.
- This is, this has to be at around 7:00 or 8:00 PM.
Nobody has seen a nursery in the process of building up the numbers of babies that are left behind by the mothers.
- Look she's pregnant.
- No, this one?
- No, this one.
- [Narrator] And then... - This one?
Oh look at this.
- She's having a baby.
- Having a, she's having a baby!
(both screams) (speaking foreign language) The baby is coming out!
(speaking foreign language) This is incredible.
She's licking, scratching, and again.
(sighs) - Wow.
- [Narrator] The camera has captured something never seen before.
- Look at the tiny forearm.
- The face. This is the face.
- Yes.
- [Narrator] First its head then its wing emerges.
Then suddenly the baby is out and clinging to its mother.
- The wings are protecting the baby, so nobody can come close to the baby at all.
- [Narrator] We catch a glimpse of the newborn pups face as its mother cleans it in her fingertips.
- Look at that. (grunts) Baby Was slipping away from the mother.
She, the baby must be very, very slippery and it's slipping down away from the control of the mother.
So she catches it with a wing.
- [Narrator] The mother quickly positions the baby on her tit for its first feed of her milk.
- That is amazing.
There's a few mothers.
There's 1, 2, 3, 4, but this is all babies.
- [Narrator] Over the next few days, the colony swells with thousands upon thousands of new babies.
