How many baby Cliff chipmunks are in a litter?
A Cliff chipmunk (Tamias dorsalis) usually gives birth to around 5 babies.With 1 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 5 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 29 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 2 grams (0 lbs) and measure 3.4 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Sciuridae family (genus: Tamias). An adult Cliff chipmunk grows up to a size of 12.5 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 cliff chipmunk (Neotamias dorsalis) is a small, bushy-tailed squirrel that typically lives along cliff walls or boulder fields bordering Pinyon-juniper woodlands in the Western United States and Mexico (commonly spotted in northern Arizona to Colorado). Cliff chipmunks are very agile, and can often be seen scaling steep cliff walls. Cliff chipmunks do not amass body fat as the more common ground squirrel does. They create a “stash” of food which they frequent during the cold winter months. The chipmunks size varies from 8-10 in. and weigh an average of 2.5 oz. These small creatures live to a staggering 12 1/2 years. The chipmunks are brown on their underside and gray on the back with white stripes on their face.
Other animals of the family Sciuridae
Cliff chipmunk is a member of the Sciuridae, as are these animals:
- Alpine chipmunk with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Gray-collared chipmunk with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Round-tailed ground squirrel with 6 babies per pregnancy
- Guayaquil squirrel weighting only 433 grams
- Samar squirrel weighting only 225 grams
- Alexander’s bush squirrel weighting only 50 grams
- Yellow-throated squirrel weighting only 803 grams
- Jungle palm squirrel with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Nilgiri striped squirrel with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Horse-tailed squirrel weighting only 358 grams
Animals that share a litter size with Cliff chipmunk
Those animals also give birth to 5 babies at once:
- Golden-mantled ground squirrel
- Euphrates jerboa
- Long-clawed shrew
- Olive-backed pocket mouse
- Winter white dwarf hamster
- Long-tailed shrew
- Woolley’s false antechinus
- Cutch rat
- Norway lemming
- Olive grass mouse
Animals with the same weight as a Cliff chipmunk
What other animals weight around 63 grams (0.14 lbs)?
- Handleyomys intectus weighting 60 grams
- Highland brush mouse weighting 54 grams
- Jaliscan spiny pocket mouse weighting 65 grams
- Large fruit-eating bat weighting 61 grams
- Yellow-rumped leaf-eared mouse weighting 53 grams
- Whitehead’s spiny rat weighting 57 grams
- One-striped opossum weighting 55 grams
- Bushy-tailed jird weighting 56 grams
- Cabrera’s vole weighting 52 grams
- Panamanian spiny pocket mouse weighting 51 grams
Animals with the same size as a Cliff chipmunk
Also reaching around 12.5 cm (0′ 5″) in size do these animals:
- Linnaeus’s mouse opossum gets as big as 12 cm (0′ 5″)
- Dollman’s melomys gets as big as 13.1 cm (0′ 6″)
- Giant kangaroo rat gets as big as 14.8 cm (0′ 6″)
- California chipmunk gets as big as 12.8 cm (0′ 6″)
- Madagascan rousette gets as big as 12.9 cm (0′ 6″)
- Colorado chipmunk gets as big as 12.2 cm (0′ 5″)
- Coxing’s white-bellied rat gets as big as 13 cm (0′ 6″)
- Golden spiny mouse gets as big as 11.1 cm (0′ 5″)
- Mountain mosaic-tailed rat gets as big as 11.5 cm (0′ 5″)
- Gray-collared chipmunk gets as big as 12.8 cm (0′ 6″)