How many baby Cairo spiny mouses are in a litter?
A Cairo spiny mouse (Acomys cahirinus) usually gives birth to around 2 babies.With 7 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 14 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 38 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 5 grams (0.01 lbs) and measure 4.3 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Acomys). An adult Cairo spiny mouse grows up to a size of 1.48 meter (4′ 11″).
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 Cairo spiny mouse (Acomys cahirinus), also known as the common spiny mouse, Egyptian spiny mouse, or Arabian spiny mouse, is a nocturnal species of rodent in the family Muridae. It is found in Africa north of the Sahara, where its natural habitats are rocky areas and hot deserts. It is omnivorous and feeds on seeds, desert plants, snails, and insects. It is a gregarious animal and lives in small family groups.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Cairo spiny mouse is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Emin’s pouched rat weighting around 1.28 kilograms (2.82 lbs)
- Akodon azarae with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Isarog shrew-rat weighting only 122 grams
- Fat-tailed gerbil with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Mount Isarog shrew-mouse weighting only 35 grams
- Arctic lemming with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Alston’s cotton rat with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Blick’s grass rat weighting only 128 grams
- White-tipped tufted-tailed rat weighting only 100 grams
- Summit rat weighting only 107 grams
Animals that share a litter size with Cairo spiny mouse
Those animals also give birth to 2 babies at once:
- Watson’s climbing rat
- Bushy-tailed jird
- Brants’s whistling rat
- Southern spiny pocket mouse
- Gambian sun squirrel
- Caracal
- White-sided jackrabbit
- Selous’s mongoose
- American badger
- Small-toothed palm civet
Animals that get as old as a Cairo spiny mouse
Other animals that usually reach the age of 5 years:
- Evening bat with 5 years
- Long-legged myotis with 4.25 years
- Southeastern myotis with 6 years
- California ground squirrel with 5 years
- Greater cane rat with 4.25 years
- Uinta ground squirrel with 5 years
- Prevost’s squirrel with 5.67 years
- Slender mongoose with 6 years
- Great Basin pocket mouse with 4 years
- Coruro with 6 years
Animals with the same weight as a Cairo spiny mouse
What other animals weight around 41 grams (0.09 lbs)?
- Pallas’s tube-nosed bat weighting 44 grams
- Cochabamba grass mouse weighting 34 grams
- Woodland thicket rat weighting 42 grams
- Four-toed rice tenrec weighting 35 grams
- Painted spiny pocket mouse weighting 43 grams
- Djoongari weighting 39 grams
- Mole-like rice tenrec weighting 34 grams
- Mexican mouse opossum weighting 49 grams
- Southern vole weighting 35 grams
- Variable grass mouse weighting 40 grams