How many baby Cape gerbils are in a litter?
A Cape gerbil (Tatera afra) usually gives birth to around 3 babies.With 6 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 18 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 23 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 4 grams (0.01 lbs) and measure 5 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Tatera). An adult Cape 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 Cape gerbil, Gerbilliscus afra, is a species of gerbil found only in South Africa. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry shrubland and temperate desert.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Cape gerbil is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Chiruromys lamia with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Gregarious short-tailed rat weighting only 92 grams
- Luzon montane forest mouse weighting only 34 grams
- Robert’s hocicudo weighting only 83 grams
- Balochistan gerbil with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Eremoryzomys weighting only 60 grams
- Blanford’s rat with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Black-tailed mosaic-tailed rat with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Deroo’s mouse with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Brants’s whistling rat with 2 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Cape gerbil
Those animals also give birth to 3 babies at once:
- Kivu long-haired shrew
- American hog-nosed skunk
- Neotropical otter
- Namaqua rock rat
- Deroo’s mouse
- European mole
- Brush mouse
- Asian house shrew
- Shipton’s mountain cavy
- Slender squirrel
Animals with the same weight as a Cape gerbil
What other animals weight around 92 grams (0.2 lbs)?
- Nelson’s kangaroo rat weighting 87 grams
- Stolzmann’s crab-eating rat weighting 84 grams
- Bush vlei rat weighting 103 grams
- Moncton’s mosaic-tailed rat weighting 80 grams
- Slender squirrel weighting 74 grams
- Northern three-toed jerboa weighting 89 grams
- Commerson’s roundleaf bat weighting 92 grams
- Gray flying fox weighting 90 grams
- Northern red-sided opossum weighting 79 grams
- Ansell’s mole-rat weighting 85 grams