How many baby Fraser’s musk shrews are in a litter?
A Fraser’s musk shrew (Crocidura poensis) usually gives birth to around 2 babies.
Upon birth, they weight 1 grams (0 lbs) and measure 3 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Soricidae family (genus: Crocidura). An adult Fraser’s musk shrew grows up to a size of 6.4 cm (0′ 3″).
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.
Fraser’s musk shrew (Crocidura poensis) is a species of mammal in the family Soricidae. It is found in Benin, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, and Togo. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests. This large black shrew was first described by the British zoologist Louis Fraser in 1843. Its exact definition is unclear; the karyotype comes from Ivory Coast but not from Equatorial Guinea, which is given as the type locality.
Other animals of the family Soricidae
Fraser’s musk shrew is a member of the Soricidae, as are these animals:
- Eisentraut’s shrew with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Apennine shrew weighting only 8 grams
- Bicolored musk shrew with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Turbo shrew with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Usambara shrew with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Chestnut-bellied shrew weighting only 7 grams
- Flat-headed shrew with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Johnston’s forest shrew weighting only 3 grams
- Peters’s musk shrew with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Slender shrew with 5 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Fraser’s musk shrew
Those animals also give birth to 2 babies at once:
- Japanese hare
- Golden bandicoot
- Long-tailed pygmy possum
- Mexican harvest mouse
- Greater bilby
- Guyenne spiny rat
- Yellow golden mole
- Lundomys
- Phillips’s kangaroo rat
- White-throated woodrat
Animals with the same weight as a Fraser’s musk shrew
What other animals weight around 17 grams (0.04 lbs)?
- Lesser short-tailed gerbil weighting 17 grams
- Neacomys tenuipes weighting 19 grams
- Algerian mouse weighting 16 grams
- African pygmy squirrel weighting 16 grams
- Short-headed broad-nosed bat weighting 14 grams
- Welwitsch’s bat weighting 15 grams
- Luzon fruit bat weighting 16 grams
- Allen’s wood mouse weighting 20 grams
- Woodland dormouse weighting 20 grams
- Trefoil horseshoe bat weighting 15 grams