How many baby Balochistan gerbils are in a litter?
A Balochistan gerbil (Gerbillus nanus) usually gives birth to around 3 babies.With 3 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 9 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 20 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 1 grams (0 lbs) and measure 3.4 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Gerbillus). An adult Balochistan gerbil grows up to a size of 6.3 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 Balochistan gerbil or dwarf gerbil (Gerbillus nanus), is distributed mainly from Morocco across north Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East and western Asia. This is a common species with a wide distribution which faces no obvious threats, so the International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated its conservation status as being of “least concern”.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Balochistan gerbil is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Ash-colored Oldfield mouse weighting only 77 grams
- San Lorenzo mouse with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Gorongoza gerbil weighting only 119 grams
- Woosnam’s brush-furred rat with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Hylaeamys yunganus weighting only 60 grams
- Rossel Island melomys raching a size of 13.9 cm (0′ 6″)
- Oryzomys gorgasi weighting only 60 grams
- Nyika climbing mouse with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Least forest mouse weighting only 21 grams
- Bougainville naked-tailed rat weighting only 397 grams
Animals that share a litter size with Balochistan gerbil
Those animals also give birth to 3 babies at once:
- Waterhouse’s swamp rat
- Capybara
- Brown palm civet
- Japanese mole
- Plains rat
- Temminck’s mouse
- Canyon mouse
- Pampas fox
- Yellow-nosed cotton rat
- Mexican cottontail
Animals with the same weight as a Balochistan gerbil
What other animals weight around 25 grams (0.06 lbs)?
- Flat-haired mouse weighting 29 grams
- Blackish white-toothed shrew weighting 20 grams
- Abrothrix lanosus weighting 27 grams
- Lesser false vampire bat weighting 24 grams
- Mediterranean pine vole weighting 22 grams
- Thespian grass mouse weighting 24 grams
- Oligoryzomys griseolus weighting 25 grams
- Hill’s sheath-tailed bat weighting 22 grams
- Sonoran harvest mouse weighting 20 grams
- Cozumel harvest mouse weighting 20 grams
Animals with the same size as a Balochistan gerbil
Also reaching around 6.3 cm (0′ 3″) in size do these animals:
- Smoky shrew gets as big as 7.2 cm (0′ 3″)
- Fringed myotis gets as big as 5.2 cm (0′ 3″)
- Velvety free-tailed bat gets as big as 6 cm (0′ 3″)
- Bates’s shrew gets as big as 6.8 cm (0′ 3″)
- Greater mouse-tailed bat gets as big as 6.1 cm (0′ 3″)
- Eurasian least shrew gets as big as 5.2 cm (0′ 3″)
- Lined pocket mouse gets as big as 7.3 cm (0′ 3″)
- Greater white-toothed shrew gets as big as 6.9 cm (0′ 3″)
- Long-tailed musk shrew gets as big as 7.1 cm (0′ 3″)
- Roborovski dwarf hamster gets as big as 7.2 cm (0′ 3″)