How many baby Beach voles are in a litter?
A Beach vole (Microtus breweri) usually gives birth to around 4 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 1.8 cm (0′ 1″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Microtus). An adult Beach vole grows up to a size of 12.7 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 beach vole (Microtus breweri) is a species of rodent in the family Cricetidae. It is found only in the United States, and its natural habitat is temperate grassland.Muskeget Island, between Nantucket, Massachusetts and Marthas Vineyard is the only known home of the beach vole, also known as the Muskeget vole. There is a question whether the Muskeget vole is a unique species or a subspecies of the meadow vole (M. pennsylvanicus).
Other animals of the family Muridae
Beach vole is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Maxomys baeodon weighting only 159 grams
- Brush mouse with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Yellow-haired hill rat weighting only 111 grams
- Haggard’s leaf-eared mouse weighting only 42 grams
- Oecomys cleberi weighting only 73 grams
- Oligoryzomys magellanicus weighting only 25 grams
- Eremoryzomys weighting only 60 grams
- Yellow-rumped leaf-eared mouse weighting only 53 grams
- Abrothrix longipilis with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Robbins’s tateril weighting only 47 grams
Animals that share a litter size with Beach vole
Those animals also give birth to 4 babies at once:
- Lesser short-tailed gerbil
- White-nosed coati
- Pacific shrew
- Kemp’s gerbil
- Dune hairy-footed gerbil
- Gray-collared chipmunk
- Tamarisk jird
- Madras treeshrew
- Parantechinus bilarni
- Gracile tateril
Animals with the same size as a Beach vole
Also reaching around 12.7 cm (0′ 5″) in size do these animals:
- Dormouse tufted-tailed rat gets as big as 12.7 cm (0′ 5″)
- Sundevall’s jird gets as big as 15 cm (0′ 6″)
- Silver mountain vole gets as big as 10.7 cm (0′ 5″)
- One-striped opossum gets as big as 13.7 cm (0′ 6″)
- Bunny rat gets as big as 14.2 cm (0′ 6″)
- Hispid pocket mouse gets as big as 10.5 cm (0′ 5″)
- Gray-tailed vole gets as big as 11 cm (0′ 5″)
- Djoongari gets as big as 10.6 cm (0′ 5″)
- Guajira mouse opossum gets as big as 13.1 cm (0′ 6″)
- Greater tree mouse gets as big as 14.4 cm (0′ 6″)