How many baby Eurasian harvest mouses are in a litter?
A Eurasian harvest mouse (Micromys minutus) usually gives birth to around 5 babies.With 2 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 10 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 21 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 3 grams (0.01 lbs) and measure 4.3 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Micromys). An adult Eurasian harvest mouse grows up to a size of 5.9 cm (0′ 3″).
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 harvest mouse (Micromys minutus) is a small rodent native to Europe and Asia. It is typically found in fields of cereal crops, such as wheat and oats, in reed beds and in other tall ground vegetation, such as long grass and hedgerows. It has reddish-brown fur with white underparts and a naked, highly prehensile tail, which it uses for climbing. It is the smallest European rodent; an adult may weigh as little as 4 grams (0.14 oz). It eats chiefly seeds and insects, but also nectar and fruit. Breeding nests are spherical constructions carefully woven from grass and attached to stems well above the ground.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Eurasian harvest mouse is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Giant bushy-tailed cloud rat raching a size of 37.1 cm (1′ 3″)
- Sula rat weighting only 131 grams
- Smoky mouse weighting only 68 grams
- Sloggett’s vlei rat with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Abrothrix lanosus weighting only 27 grams
- Zygodontomys brunneus weighting only 75 grams
- Nephelomys albigularis with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Pale leaf-eared mouse weighting only 102 grams
- Long-nosed mosaic-tailed rat with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Jalapan pine vole with 1 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Eurasian harvest mouse
Those animals also give birth to 5 babies at once:
- Southern white-breasted hedgehog
- Olive grass mouse
- Cutch rat
- Social vole
- Long-eared chipmunk
- Montane shrew
- Alpine shrew
- Long-tailed vole
- Little Indian field mouse
- Cliff chipmunk
Animals that get as old as a Eurasian harvest mouse
Other animals that usually reach the age of 5 years:
- Greater cane rat with 4.25 years
- Western quoll with 5 years
- Bunny rat with 5.5 years
- Common sheath-tailed bat with 5 years
- Sumichrast’s vesper rat with 5.17 years
- Greater bulldog bat with 5.75 years
- Hazel dormouse with 6 years
- Eastern barred bandicoot with 5.5 years
- Fat-tailed gerbil with 4.33 years
- Pallas’s pika with 4 years
Animals with the same weight as a Eurasian harvest mouse
What other animals weight around 7 grams (0.02 lbs)?
- Croslet horseshoe bat weighting 7 grams
- Narrow-nosed planigale weighting 6 grams
- Southern little yellow-eared bat weighting 8 grams
- Greater tube-nosed bat weighting 7 grams
- Thomas’s nectar bat weighting 7 grams
- Toad mouse weighting 8 grams
- MacConnell’s bat weighting 6 grams
- Myotis bocagei weighting 7 grams
- Ozimops loriae weighting 7 grams
- Cape serotine weighting 6 grams
Animals with the same size as a Eurasian harvest mouse
Also reaching around 5.9 cm (0′ 3″) in size do these animals:
- Fulvous harvest mouse gets as big as 6.6 cm (0′ 3″)
- Large-eared gray shrew gets as big as 6.6 cm (0′ 3″)
- Moss-forest blossom bat gets as big as 6.9 cm (0′ 3″)
- Pygmy short-tailed opossum gets as big as 7 cm (0′ 3″)
- Slender shrew gets as big as 5.3 cm (0′ 3″)
- Greater white-toothed shrew gets as big as 6.9 cm (0′ 3″)
- True’s shrew mole gets as big as 6.5 cm (0′ 3″)
- Saharan shrew gets as big as 6.3 cm (0′ 3″)
- Lesser mouse-tailed bat gets as big as 5.9 cm (0′ 3″)
- Seba’s short-tailed bat gets as big as 6 cm (0′ 3″)