How many baby Bushveld gerbils are in a litter?
A Bushveld gerbil (Tatera leucogaster) usually gives birth to around 4 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 28 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 2 grams (0 lbs) and measure 5 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Tatera). An adult Bushveld gerbil grows up to a size of 11.7 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 Bushveld gerbil (Gerbilliscus leucogaster) is a species of gerbil found in Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Its natural habitats are dry savanna, subtropical or tropical dry shrubland, subtropical or tropical dry lowland grassland, and hot deserts.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Bushveld gerbil is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Oecomys rex weighting only 73 grams
- Long-tailed mountain rat weighting only 79 grams
- Pinyon mouse with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Shaw Mayer’s brush mouse with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Blue-gray mouse raching a size of 8.8 cm (0′ 4″)
- Southern multimammate mouse with 7 babies per pregnancy
- Palawan pencil-tailed tree mouse weighting only 28 grams
- Roraima mouse weighting only 33 grams
- Ash-grey mouse with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Chinese zokor weighting only 257 grams
Animals that share a litter size with Bushveld gerbil
Those animals also give birth to 4 babies at once:
- Eastern heather vole
- Pygmy gerbil
- Korean field mouse
- Hazel dormouse
- American red squirrel
- Smith’s vole
- Lesser capybara
- Short-tailed shrew tenrec
- Culpeo
- Hooded skunk
Animals with the same weight as a Bushveld gerbil
What other animals weight around 73 grams (0.16 lbs)?
- Mashona mole-rat weighting 65 grams
- Indonesian short-nosed fruit bat weighting 59 grams
- European mole weighting 86 grams
- Long-tailed mouse weighting 63 grams
- Gray-tailed narrow-headed rat weighting 85 grams
- Bolivian big-eared mouse weighting 71 grams
- Gaumer’s spiny pocket mouse weighting 63 grams
- Slender squirrel weighting 74 grams
- Puebla deer mouse weighting 59 grams
- Southern flying squirrel weighting 72 grams