Maternity colony (bats) Maternity colony (bats) A maternity colony refers to a temporary association of reproductive female bats for giving birth to, nursing, and weaning their pups. The colonies are initiated by pregnant bats. After giving birth, the colony consists of the lactating females and their offspring. After weaning, juveniles will leave the maternity colony, and the colony itself will break apart. The size of a maternity colony is highly variable by species, with some species forming colonies consisting of ten or fewer individuals, while the largest maternity colony in the world in Bracken Cave is estimated to have over 15 million bats.
Bats language The first grammar of Bats – "Über die Thusch-Sprache" – was compiled by the German orientalist Anton Schiefner (1817–1879) making it into the first grammar of any indigenous Caucasian languages based on sound scientific principles. Traditional analyses posit that Bats has eight noun classes, the highest number among the Northeast Caucasian languages—however, a more-recent analysis gives only five classes. This analysis (not unlike analyses of Lak) yields the grouping shown below: Under this analysis, the additional three classes are examples of "inquorate gender", where the number of items displaying this behavior are insufficient to constitute an independent grouping. Furthermore, they