How big does a Pacarana get? Here is an overview over the average adult age:
A grown Pacarana (Dinomys branickii) reaches an average size of 75 cm (2′ 6″).
When born, they have an average size of 0 cm (0′ 0″). During their lifetime of about 9.33 years, they grow from 769 grams (1.7 lbs) to 12.5 kg (27.56 lbs). A Pacarana has 1 babies at once. The Pacarana (genus: Dinomys) is a member of the family Dinomyidae.
As a reference: Humans reach an average body size of 1.65m (5′ 5″) while carrying 62 kg (137 lbs). A human woman is pregnant for 280 days (40 weeks) and on average become 75 years old.
The pacarana (Dinomys branickii) is a rare and slow-moving hystricognath rodent indigenous to South America. Native Tupi people call it the pacarana (false paca) because it is superficially similar to the paca, a different rodent which is not in the same family. The pacarana has a chunky body and is large for a rodent, weighing up to 15 kg (33 lb) and measuring up to 79 cm (31 in) in length, not including the thick, furry tail.The pacarana is nocturnal and is found only in tropical forests of the western Amazon River basin and adjacent foothills of the Andes Mountains. It ranges from northwestern Venezuela and Colombia to western Bolivia, including the Yungas. It is common in Cotapata National Park in Bolivia.The pacarana is the sole extant member of the rodent family Dinomyidae in the infraorder Caviomorpha; the paca that it resembles in appearance is in a different Caviomorph family, the Cuniculidae. Initially, the pacarana was regarded as a member of the superfamily Muroidea, that includes the true mice, but that view was abandoned in the face of evidence that suggests that the pacarana is in the family Dinomyidae together with extinct animals such as Phoberomys pattersoni and Josephoartigasia monesi, prehistoric giant rodents that lived in South America several million years ago.Pacaranas typically are found in family groups of four or five.
Animals with the same size as a Pacarana
Not that size really matters, but it makes things comparable. So here are a couple of animals that are as big as Pacarana:
- Bornean orangutan with a size of 89 cm (3′ 0″)
- Tibetan sand fox with a size of 60.2 cm (2′ 0″)
- Lowland paca with a size of 65 cm (2′ 2″)
- King colobus with a size of 62.7 cm (2′ 1″)
- Masked palm civet with a size of 63.4 cm (2′ 1″)
- Moor macaque with a size of 66 cm (2′ 2″)
- Pampas cat with a size of 61.6 cm (2′ 1″)
- Black-footed gray langur with a size of 65.5 cm (2′ 2″)
- Dingiso with a size of 67.4 cm (2′ 3″)
- Southern hairy-nosed wombat with a size of 85.5 cm (2′ 10″)
Animals with the same litter size as a Pacarana
Here is a list of animals that have the same number of babies per litter (1) as a Pacarana:
- Malagasy civet
- Northern bat
- Southern naked-tailed armadillo
- Natal red rock hare
- Ollala brothers’s titi
- Smoky pocket gopher
- Typical vlei rat
- Siamang
- Dama gazelle
- Indian rhinoceros
Animals with the same life expectancy as a Pacarana
Completely different animals, but becoming as old as a Pacarana:
- Least weasel with an average maximal age of 10 years
- Nathusius’s pipistrelle with an average maximal age of 8 years
- Siberian weasel with an average maximal age of 8.83 years
- Jaguarundi with an average maximal age of 10.58 years
- Kodkod with an average maximal age of 11 years
- Muskrat with an average maximal age of 10 years
- White-lined broad-nosed bat with an average maximal age of 10.17 years
- Southern tree hyrax with an average maximal age of 10 years
- Central American agouti with an average maximal age of 10 years
- Red-tailed chipmunk with an average maximal age of 8 years
Animals with the same weight as a Pacarana
As a comparison, here are some other animals that weight as much as the Dinomys branickii:
- Roosevelt’s muntjac with a weight of 10.76 kilos (23.72 lbs)
- Iberian lynx with a weight of 11.08 kilos (24.43 lbs)
- Binturong with a weight of 13 kilos (28.66 lbs)
- Alpine musk deer with a weight of 13.6 kilos (29.98 lbs)
- Siberian musk deer with a weight of 13.31 kilos (29.34 lbs)
- Golden snub-nosed monkey with a weight of 13.46 kilos (29.67 lbs)
- Malabar large-spotted civet with a weight of 12.08 kilos (26.63 lbs)
- Dwarf musk deer with a weight of 12.39 kilos (27.32 lbs)
- Red forest duiker with a weight of 12.36 kilos (27.25 lbs)
- Swamp wallaby with a weight of 15 kilos (33.07 lbs)