How many baby Honey possums are in a litter?
A Honey possum (Tarsipes rostratus) usually gives birth to around 2 babies.With 3 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 6 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 61 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 4.51 kg (9.95 lbs) and measure 4.8 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Tarsipedidae family (genus: Tarsipes). An adult Honey possum grows up to a size of 7.7 cm (0′ 4″).
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 honey possum or noolbenger refers to Tarsipes rostratus, a tiny species of marsupial that feeds on the nectar and pollen of a diverse range of flowering plants. Found in southwest Australia, it is an important pollinator for such plants as Banksia attenuata, Banksia coccinea and Adenanthos cuneatus.
Animals that share a litter size with Honey possum
Those animals also give birth to 2 babies at once:
- Greater dwarf shrew
- Large tree mouse
- Panamint kangaroo rat
- Kodkod
- Western gray squirrel
- Kellen’s dormouse
- Wolverine
- Sikkim mountain vole
- Chinese mole shrew
- Savi’s pipistrelle
Animals that get as old as a Honey possum
Other animals that usually reach the age of 2 years:
- Southern red-backed vole with 1.67 years
- Pilbara ningaui with 2 years
- Ningbing false antechinus with 2 years
- Dusky antechinus with 2 years
- White-eared opossum with 1.67 years
- Silky anteater with 2.25 years
- Malabar spiny dormouse with 1.67 years
- Cinereus shrew with 1.92 years
- Heermann’s kangaroo rat with 2.33 years
- Red-cheeked dunnart with 2 years
Animals with the same weight as a Honey possum
What other animals weight around 9 grams (0.02 lbs)?
- Fog shrew weighting 8 grams
- Silvered bat weighting 9 grams
- Thomas’s horseshoe bat weighting 8 grams
- Pouched gerbil weighting 10 grams
- Bicolored shrew weighting 10 grams
- Little native mouse weighting 8 grams
- Round-eared tube-nosed bat weighting 9 grams
- Bechstein’s bat weighting 9 grams
- Townsend’s big-eared bat weighting 10 grams
- Chestnut climbing mouse weighting 8 grams
Animals with the same size as a Honey possum
Also reaching around 7.7 cm (0′ 4″) in size do these animals:
- Meadow jumping mouse gets as big as 8.6 cm (0′ 4″)
- Ghost-faced bat gets as big as 6.6 cm (0′ 3″)
- Long-clawed shrew gets as big as 7.5 cm (0′ 3″)
- Chestnut dunnart gets as big as 9.2 cm (0′ 4″)
- Burt’s deer mouse gets as big as 8.9 cm (0′ 4″)
- Mediterranean water shrew gets as big as 7.5 cm (0′ 3″)
- Chacoan pygmy opossum gets as big as 8.9 cm (0′ 4″)
- Steppe mouse gets as big as 7.5 cm (0′ 3″)
- Common noctule gets as big as 7.5 cm (0′ 3″)
- Long-tongued nectar bat gets as big as 6.8 cm (0′ 3″)