How many baby Plains rats are in a litter?
A Plains rat (Pseudomys australis) usually gives birth to around 3 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 31 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 4 grams (0.01 lbs) and measure 3.3 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Pseudomys). An adult Plains rat grows up to a size of 12.1 cm (0′ 5″).
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 plains rat (Pseudomys australis), also known as the plains mouse, is a conilurine rodent native to arid and semi-arid Australia. Referred to as the pallyoora or yarlie by Indigenous groups, the plains rat was once widely distributed across central Australia, including north-west New South Wales and south-west Queensland; however, habitat degradation due to grazing, introduced predators and drought have contributed to its decline. Consequently, the plains rat has been listed as ‘presumed extinct’ in New South Wales and Victoria, ‘endangered’ in the Northern Territory and Queensland and ‘vulnerable’ in Western Australia and South Australia. While recent research has indicated the presence of the plains rat in areas such as the Fowlers Gap and Strzelecki Desert regions of New South Wales and within the Diamantina National Park in Queensland, there are only five sub-populations currently recognised nationally, none of which coincide with recent discoveries of the plains rat. As the current population trend of the plains rat has been listed as ‘declining’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the IUCN conservation status for the species is ‘vulnerable’.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Plains rat is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Mindoro black rat with 6 babies per pregnancy
- Small pencil-tailed tree mouse weighting only 28 grams
- Pale leaf-eared mouse weighting only 102 grams
- Kolan vole with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Definitive leaf-eared mouse weighting only 89 grams
- Goldman’s water mouse weighting only 38 grams
- Isabel naked-tailed rat raching a size of 27 cm (0′ 11″)
- Montane wood mouse with 4 babies per pregnancy
- California red tree mouse with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Puna mouse with 1 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Plains rat
Those animals also give birth to 3 babies at once:
- Celebes warty pig
- Greater cane rat
- Greater red musk shrew
- Hispid pocket mouse
- Nelson’s pocket mouse
- Egyptian mongoose
- Masked white-tailed rat
- Small Japanese mole
- Desert hedgehog
- Oligoryzomys fulvescens
Animals that get as old as a Plains rat
Other animals that usually reach the age of 5.58 years:
- Guyenne spiny rat with 4.75 years
- Dobson’s shrew tenrec with 5.58 years
- Long-tailed dunnart with 5 years
- Dark kangaroo mouse with 5.42 years
- Greater bulldog bat with 5.75 years
- Coruro with 6 years
- House mouse with 6 years
- Bank vole with 4.83 years
- Canyon bat with 6 years
- Spectral bat with 6.5 years
Animals with the same weight as a Plains rat
What other animals weight around 53 grams (0.12 lbs)?
- Mamore arboreal rice rat weighting 62 grams
- Arends’s golden mole weighting 52 grams
- Chiruromys lamia weighting 47 grams
- Pyrenean desman weighting 60 grams
- Alexander’s bush squirrel weighting 50 grams
- Oyapock’s fish-eating rat weighting 47 grams
- Gracile tateril weighting 49 grams
- Euryoryzomys nitidus weighting 55 grams
- Indonesian short-nosed fruit bat weighting 59 grams
- Diadem leaf-nosed bat weighting 46 grams
Animals with the same size as a Plains rat
Also reaching around 12.1 cm (0′ 5″) in size do these animals:
- Tete veld aethomys gets as big as 14.2 cm (0′ 6″)
- Asian garden dormouse gets as big as 13.7 cm (0′ 6″)
- Snow-footed Oldfield mouse gets as big as 12.1 cm (0′ 5″)
- Fawn-footed mosaic-tailed rat gets as big as 13.3 cm (0′ 6″)
- Yellow-pine chipmunk gets as big as 12 cm (0′ 5″)
- Gray slender opossum gets as big as 13 cm (0′ 6″)
- Commerson’s roundleaf bat gets as big as 12.7 cm (0′ 5″)
- Panama slender opossum gets as big as 11.1 cm (0′ 5″)
- Narrow-headed slender opossum gets as big as 10.5 cm (0′ 5″)
- Silver mountain vole gets as big as 10.7 cm (0′ 5″)