How many baby Mechow’s mole-rats are in a litter?
A Mechow’s mole-rat (Cryptomys mechowi) usually gives birth to around 2 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 104 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 18 grams (0.04 lbs) and measure 2.2 cm (0′ 1″). They are a member of the Bathyergidae family (genus: Cryptomys). An adult Mechow’s mole-rat grows up to a size of 19.3 cm (0′ 8″).
To have a reference: Humans obviously usually have a litter size of one ;). Their babies are in the womb of their mother for 280 days (40 weeks) and reach an average size of 1.65m (5′ 5″). They weight in at 62 kg (137 lbs), which is obviously highly individual, and reach an average age of 75 years.
Mechow’s mole-rat (Fukomys mechowii ) is a species of rodent in the family Bathyergidae. It is found in Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and possibly Malawi. Its natural habitats are moist savanna, subtropical or tropical dry shrubland, and subtropical or tropical dry lowland grassland. This mole-rat was first described by the German naturalist Wilhelm Peters in 1881. The specific epithet honours the Prussian explorer and naturalist Friedrich Wilhelm Alexander von Mechow.
Other animals of the family Bathyergidae
Mechow’s mole-rat is a member of the Bathyergidae, as are these animals:
- Namaqua dune mole-rat with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Silvery mole-rat with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Zambian mole-rat weighting only 76 grams
- Bocage’s mole-rat weighting only 93 grams
- Ansell’s mole-rat weighting only 85 grams
- Damaraland mole-rat with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Naked mole-rat with 11 babies per pregnancy
- Common mole-rat with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Mashona mole-rat with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Cape mole-rat with 5 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Mechow’s mole-rat
Those animals also give birth to 2 babies at once:
- Cape dune mole-rat
- Allegheny woodrat
- Shaw Mayer’s brush mouse
- California red tree mouse
- Jungle palm squirrel
- Southern mountain cavy
- Lusitanian pine vole
- Florida mouse
- Moss-forest rat
- Short-tailed chinchilla
Animals with the same weight as a Mechow’s mole-rat
What other animals weight around 272 grams (0.6 lbs)?
- Eastern rat weighting 230 grams
- Samar squirrel weighting 225 grams
- Pallas’s squirrel weighting 283 grams
- Emilia’s marmoset weighting 309 grams
- Sulawesi naked-backed fruit bat weighting 301 grams
- Orange-brown Atlantic tree-rat weighting 296 grams
- Dwarf scaly-tailed squirrel weighting 250 grams
- White-toothed tuco-tuco weighting 244 grams
- Vogelkop ringtail possum weighting 255 grams
- Catamarca tuco-tuco weighting 316 grams