How many baby Desert cottontails are in a litter?
A Desert cottontail (Sylvilagus audubonii) usually gives birth to around 3 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 28 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 34 grams (0.07 lbs) and measure 8 cm (0′ 4″). They are a member of the Leporidae family (genus: Sylvilagus). An adult Desert cottontail grows up to a size of 32.5 cm (1′ 1″).
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 desert cottontail (Sylvilagus audubonii), also known as Audubon’s cottontail, is a New World cottontail rabbit, and a member of the family Leporidae. Unlike the European rabbit, they do not form social burrow systems, but compared with some other leporids, they are extremely tolerant of other individuals in their vicinity.Cottontails give birth to their kits in burrows vacated by other mammals. They sometimes cool off, or take refuge in scratched out shallow created depressions of their own making, using their front paws like a back hoe. They are not usually active in the middle of the day, but can be observed foraging in the early morning, and early evening. Cottontails are rarely found out of their burrows looking for food on windy days, because the wind interferes with their ability to hear approaching predators, their primary defense mechanism.The dental formula for Sylvilagus audubonii is 2.0.3.31.0.3.3= 28. All species under the family Leporidae have the same dental formula.
Other animals of the family Leporidae
Desert cottontail is a member of the Leporidae, as are these animals:
- European rabbit with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Volcano rabbit with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Yunnan hare with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Eastern cottontail with 4 babies per pregnancy
- San José brush rabbit raching a size of 29.4 cm (1′ 0″)
- Tehuantepec jackrabbit weighting around 3 kilograms (6.61 lbs)
- Pygmy rabbit with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Manzano Mountain cottontail raching a size of 38.5 cm (1′ 4″)
- Dice’s cottontail with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Scrub hare with 1 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Desert cottontail
Those animals also give birth to 3 babies at once:
- Japanese mole
- Oryzomys couesi
- Rakali
- Rock vole
- Kaiser’s rock rat
- Swamp musk shrew
- Lesser Egyptian jerboa
- Ash-grey mouse
- Lesser white-toothed shrew
- Altai birch mouse
Animals with the same weight as a Desert cottontail
What other animals weight around 882 grams (1.94 lbs)?
- Bolivian bamboo rat weighting 729 grams
- Black-footed tree-rat weighting 716 grams
- Great flying fox usually reaching 1.02 kgs (2.25 lbs)
- Cape gray mongoose weighting 791 grams
- Meerkat weighting 730 grams
- Raffray’s bandicoot weighting 905 grams
- Andean squirrel weighting 803 grams
- Central American squirrel monkey weighting 714 grams
- New England cottontail weighting 814 grams
- American marten weighting 878 grams
Animals with the same size as a Desert cottontail
Also reaching around 32.5 cm (1′ 1″) in size do these animals:
- Angolan kusimanse gets as big as 32.6 cm (1′ 1″)
- Ring-tailed vontsira gets as big as 35.2 cm (1′ 2″)
- Hamlyn’s monkey gets as big as 28 cm (1′ 0″)
- Malagasy giant rat gets as big as 30.6 cm (1′ 1″)
- Gilbert’s potoroo gets as big as 34.9 cm (1′ 2″)
- Brazilian three-banded armadillo gets as big as 30 cm (1′ 0″)
- Central American squirrel monkey gets as big as 28.2 cm (1′ 0″)
- Black-bearded flying fox gets as big as 28.5 cm (1′ 0″)
- Sumatran striped rabbit gets as big as 37.7 cm (1′ 3″)
- Fennec fox gets as big as 37.5 cm (1′ 3″)