How many baby Bank voles are in a litter?
A Bank vole (Clethrionomys glareolus) usually gives birth to around 4 babies.With 3 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 12 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 19 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 1 grams (0 lbs) and measure 2.9 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Clethrionomys). An adult Bank vole grows up to a size of 10.6 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 bank vole (Myodes glareolus; formerly Clethrionomys glareolus) is a small vole with red-brown fur and some grey patches, with a tail about half as long as its body. A rodent, it lives in woodland areas and is around 100 millimetres (3.9 in) in length. The bank vole is found in much of Europe and in northwestern Asia. It is native to Great Britain but not to Ireland, where it has been accidentally introduced, and has now colonised much of the south and southwest.The bank vole lives in woodland, hedgerows and other dense vegetation such as bracken and bramble. Its underground chamber is lined with moss, feathers and vegetable fibre and contains a store of food. It can live for eighteen months to two years in the wild and over 42 months in captivity and is mostly herbivorous, eating buds, bark, seeds, nuts, leaves and fruits and occasionally insects and other small invertebrates. It readily climbs into scrub and low branches of trees although it is not as versatile as a mouse. It breeds in shallow burrows, the female rearing about four litters of pups during the summer.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Bank vole is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Bower’s white-toothed rat with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Large vesper mouse with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Glacier rat with 2 babies per pregnancy
- African grass rat with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Rosalinda’s Oldfield mouse weighting only 77 grams
- Nicaraguan harvest mouse raching a size of 7.1 cm (0′ 3″)
- Vogelkop mountain rat raching a size of 13.4 cm (0′ 6″)
- Southern pygmy mouse with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Lesser stick-nest rat weighting only 150 grams
- Watson’s climbing rat with 2 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Bank vole
Those animals also give birth to 4 babies at once:
- Red squirrel
- Geata mouse shrew
- Korean field mouse
- Shrew gymnure
- Sand cat
- Siberian zokor
- Sonoma chipmunk
- Visayan warty pig
- Turkestan red pika
- Rudd’s mouse
Animals that get as old as a Bank vole
Other animals that usually reach the age of 4.83 years:
- Stripe-faced dunnart with 4.83 years
- Southern grasshopper mouse with 4.58 years
- Black rat with 4.17 years
- Greater grison with 5.25 years
- Central African oyan with 5.33 years
- Pyrenean desman with 5 years
- Pallas’s pika with 4 years
- Hispid cotton rat with 5.17 years
- Great gerbil with 4 years
- Little free-tailed bat with 5 years
Animals with the same weight as a Bank vole
What other animals weight around 20 grams (0.04 lbs)?
- Eva’s desert mouse weighting 21 grams
- Halcyon horseshoe bat weighting 18 grams
- White-bellied yellow bat weighting 20 grams
- Monte gerbil mouse weighting 18 grams
- White-footed mouse weighting 18 grams
- Forrest’s mouse weighting 23 grams
- Savanna swamp shrew weighting 19 grams
- Niobe’s shrew weighting 16 grams
- Gilbert’s dunnart weighting 19 grams
- House mouse weighting 19 grams
Animals with the same size as a Bank vole
Also reaching around 10.6 cm (0′ 5″) in size do these animals:
- White-toothed brush mouse gets as big as 11.5 cm (0′ 5″)
- Mexican vole gets as big as 11.1 cm (0′ 5″)
- Pacific jumping mouse gets as big as 9.8 cm (0′ 4″)
- Black-bellied fruit bat gets as big as 9.4 cm (0′ 4″)
- Alpine chipmunk gets as big as 10.4 cm (0′ 5″)
- Great fruit-eating bat gets as big as 9.5 cm (0′ 4″)
- Osgood’s short-tailed opossum gets as big as 9.5 cm (0′ 4″)
- Altiplano grass mouse gets as big as 9.7 cm (0′ 4″)
- Mountain tube-nosed fruit bat gets as big as 8.6 cm (0′ 4″)
- Transcaucasian water shrew gets as big as 8.6 cm (0′ 4″)