How many baby Etruscan shrews are in a litter?
A Etruscan shrew (Suncus etruscus) usually gives birth to around 4 babies.With 3 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 12 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 27 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 7 grams (0.02 lbs) and measure 1.4 cm (0′ 1″). They are a member of the Soricidae family (genus: Suncus). An adult Etruscan shrew grows up to a size of 45.4 cm (1′ 6″).
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 Etruscan shrew (Suncus etruscus), also known as the Etruscan pygmy shrew or the white-toothed pygmy shrew, is the smallest known mammal by mass, weighing only about 1.8 grams (0.063 oz) on average. (The bumblebee bat is regarded as the smallest mammal by skull size and body length.)The Etruscan shrew has a body length of about 4 centimetres (1.6 in) excluding the tail. It is characterized by very rapid movements and a fast metabolism, eating about 1.5–2 times its own body weight per day. It feeds on various small vertebrates and invertebrates, mostly insects, and can hunt individuals of the same size as itself. These shrews prefer warm and damp climates and are widely distributed in the belt between 10° and 30°N latitude stretching from Europe and North Africa up to Malaysia. They are also found in the Maltese islands, situated in the middle of the Mediterranean sea. Although widespread and not threatened overall, they are generally uncommon and are endangered in some countries.
Other animals of the family Soricidae
Etruscan shrew is a member of the Soricidae, as are these animals:
- Himalayan water shrew weighting only 33 grams
- Fox’s shrew with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Himalayan shrew with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Tundra shrew with 8 babies per pregnancy
- American pygmy shrew with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Merida small-eared shrew weighting only 12 grams
- Lowe’s shrew raching a size of 6.9 cm (0′ 3″)
- Goldman’s broad-clawed shrew weighting only 6 grams
- Salenski’s shrew weighting only 5 grams
- Butiaba naked-tailed shrew with 2 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Etruscan shrew
Those animals also give birth to 4 babies at once:
- Bare-tailed woolly opossum
- Creek groove-toothed swamp rat
- California pocket mouse
- White-nosed coati
- Southern African hedgehog
- Short-tailed bandicoot rat
- Townsend’s chipmunk
- Sonoma chipmunk
- American red squirrel
- Silver mountain vole
Animals that get as old as a Etruscan shrew
Other animals that usually reach the age of 2.67 years:
- New Guinean quoll with 3 years
- Northern short-tailed shrew with 2.75 years
- African pygmy mouse with 3.08 years
- Common opossum with 2.67 years
- Japanese mountain mole with 3 years
- Golden mouse with 2.5 years
- Red-tailed phascogale with 3 years
- Bennett’s chinchilla rat with 2.25 years
- Asian house shrew with 2.5 years
- South African pouched mouse with 2.75 years
Animals with the same weight as a Etruscan shrew
What other animals weight around 2 grams (0 lbs)?
- Flat-headed shrew weighting 2 grams
- Arizona shrew weighting 2 grams
- Dwarf shrew weighting 2 grams
- Nyctophilus geoffroyi weighting 2 grams
- Mauritanian shrew weighting 2 grams
- Black myotis weighting 2 grams
- Least woolly bat weighting 2 grams
- Eurasian least shrew weighting 2 grams
- Himalayan whiskered bat weighting 2 grams
- Tiny pipistrelle weighting 2 grams