Lesser long-nosed bats are working moms.

Scientifically they're called Leptonycteris yerbabuenae, but conservationists know them as the “tequila bats” that pollinate the agave plants used to make the Mexican liquor.

After spending their nights looking for nectar, they return to their caves to nurse their pups. It's no easy task. The babies are left in large clusters of other pups—all hungrily waiting in pitch black caves.

Of all the caves these tequila bats call home, the Pinacate and Altar Desert Reserve in the Sonoran Desert is the largest of their maternity wards. The bats mate in central and western Mexico every winter and, in the spring, they migrate north to the American southwest to give birth.

National Geographic explorer Begoña Iñarritu studied the