How many baby Leadbeater’s possums are in a litter?
A Leadbeater’s possum (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri) usually gives birth to around 1 babies.With 2 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 2 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 18 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 86 grams (0.19 lbs) and measure 15.7 cm (0′ 7″). They are a member of the Petauridae family (genus: Gymnobelideus). An adult Leadbeater’s possum grows up to a size of 77.3 cm (2′ 7″).
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.
Leadbeater’s possum (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri) is a critically endangered possum largely restricted to small pockets of alpine ash, mountain ash, and snow gum forests in the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia, north-east of Melbourne. It is primitive, relict, and non-gliding, and, as the only species in the petaurid genus Gymnobelideus, represents an ancestral form. Formerly, Leadbeater’s possums were moderately common within the very small areas they inhabited; their requirement for year-round food supplies and tree-holes to take refuge in during the day restricts them to mixed-age wet sclerophyll forest with a dense mid-story of Acacia. The species was named in 1867 after John Leadbeater, the then taxidermist at the Museum Victoria. They also go by the common name of fairy possum. On 2 March 1971, the State of Victoria made the Leadbeater’s possum its faunal emblem.
Other animals of the family Petauridae
Leadbeater’s possum is a member of the Petauridae, as are these animals:
- Biak glider with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Sugar glider with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Northern glider with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Great-tailed triok raching a size of 22.3 cm (0′ 9″)
- Mahogany glider with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Squirrel glider with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Yellow-bellied glider with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Tate’s triok weighting only 252 grams
- Long-fingered triok with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Striped possum with 1 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Leadbeater’s possum
Those animals also give birth to 1 babies at once:
- Bunyoro rabbit
- Lesser false vampire bat
- Spectral tarsier
- Cape horseshoe bat
- Indian hare
- Red-rumped agouti
- Kinkajou
- Java mouse-deer
- South African springhare
- Smoky pocket gopher
Animals that get as old as a Leadbeater’s possum
Other animals that usually reach the age of 11 years:
- Eastern cottontail with 9 years
- Siberian weasel with 8.83 years
- Grant’s gazelle with 12.67 years
- Parti-coloured bat with 12 years
- Silver-haired bat with 12 years
- Boodie with 10 years
- Long-tailed chinchilla with 11.25 years
- Red-legged sun squirrel with 8.83 years
- Common kusimanse with 9 years
- Blanford’s fox with 10 years
Animals with the same weight as a Leadbeater’s possum
What other animals weight around 137 grams (0.3 lbs)?
- Middle East blind mole-rat weighting 164 grams
- San Joaquin antelope squirrel weighting 160 grams
- Island mouse weighting 164 grams
- Dobson’s epauletted fruit bat weighting 121 grams
- Thomas’s bushbaby weighting 117 grams
- Guianan spear-nosed bat weighting 134 grams
- Mountain viscacha rat weighting 124 grams
- Bolivian chinchilla rat weighting 158 grams
- Palawan spiny rat weighting 159 grams
- Jaliscan cotton rat weighting 120 grams