How many baby Common planigales are in a litter?
A Common planigale (Planigale maculata) usually gives birth to around 7 babies.With 2 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 14 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 19 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 105 grams (0.23 lbs) and measure 2 cm (0′ 1″). They are a member of the Dasyuridae family (genus: Planigale). An adult Common planigale grows up to a size of 30 cm (1′ 0″).
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 common planigale (Planigale maculata), also known as the pygmy planigale or the coastal planigale, is one of many small marsupial carnivores known as “marsupial mice” found in Australia. There they fill a similar niche to the insectivores of other parts of the world.
Other animals of the family Dasyuridae
Common planigale is a member of the Dasyuridae, as are these animals:
- Little long-tailed dunnart with 7 babies per pregnancy
- Short-furred dasyure weighting only 161 grams
- Little red kaluta with 6 babies per pregnancy
- Narrow-nosed planigale with 5 babies per pregnancy
- White-tailed dunnart weighting only 25 grams
- Bronze quoll with 6 babies per pregnancy
- Southern ningaui with 7 babies per pregnancy
- Lesser hairy-footed dunnart with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Gilbert’s dunnart weighting only 19 grams
- Red-bellied marsupial shrew raching a size of 17.9 cm (0′ 8″)
Animals that share a litter size with Common planigale
Those animals also give birth to 7 babies at once:
- Arctic fox
- Ooldea dunnart
- Red-cheeked ground squirrel
- Steppe polecat
- Flat-skulled shrew
- Laxmann’s shrew
- Sakhalin vole
- Southern ningaui
- Stripe-faced dunnart
- Piute ground squirrel
Animals that get as old as a Common planigale
Other animals that usually reach the age of 4 years:
- Brown-tailed mongoose with 4.75 years
- Gray tree rat with 3.75 years
- Golden-rumped elephant shrew with 4 years
- Yellow-faced pocket gopher with 4.67 years
- Yellow-necked mouse with 4 years
- Bush rat with 3.42 years
- Giant golden mole with 4 years
- Sand-colored soft-furred rat with 4 years
- Raffray’s bandicoot with 3.25 years
- Woolley’s false antechinus with 4 years
Animals with the same weight as a Common planigale
What other animals weight around 12 grams (0.03 lbs)?
- Rufous trident bat weighting 13 grams
- Savanna shrew weighting 10 grams
- Aztec mastiff bat weighting 14 grams
- Roberts’s flat-headed bat weighting 14 grams
- Jamaican flower bat weighting 14 grams
- Dark-footed mouse shrew weighting 12 grams
- Southern birch mouse weighting 11 grams
- Little Indian field mouse weighting 13 grams
- Moonshine shrew weighting 13 grams
- Large rufous horseshoe bat weighting 10 grams