How many baby Midday jirds are in a litter?
A Midday jird (Meriones meridianus) usually gives birth to around 5 babies.With 3 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 15 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 23 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 5 grams (0.01 lbs) and measure 1.5 cm (0′ 1″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Meriones). An adult Midday jird grows up to a size of 15 cm (0′ 6″).
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.
The midday jird, or midday gerbil (Meriones meridianus), is a species of rodent in the family Muridae and native to sandy deserts in Afghanistan, China, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. How this rodent received its common name is unclear as it is mainly nocturnal.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Midday jird is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Wagner’s gerbil with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Coxing’s white-bellied rat with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Greater Egyptian gerbil with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Western harvest mouse with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Sula rat weighting only 131 grams
- California red tree mouse with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Singing vole with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Bushy-tailed jird with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Large tree mouse with 2 babies per pregnancy
- African pygmy mouse with 4 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Midday jird
Those animals also give birth to 5 babies at once: