How many baby Gray-tailed voles are in a litter?
A Gray-tailed vole (Microtus canicaudus) usually gives birth to around 4 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 23 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 2 grams (0 lbs) and measure 1.8 cm (0′ 1″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Microtus). An adult Gray-tailed vole grows up to a size of 11 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 gray-tailed vole (Microtus canicaudus) also known as the gray-tailed meadow vole or gray-tailed meadow mouse, is a rodent in the genus Microtus (small-eared “meadow voles”) of the family Cricetidae. Voles are small mammals, and this species lies roughly in the middle of their size range. First collected in 1895, it is endemic to the Willamette Valley, Oregon, and Clark County, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Historically, they were found in the prairie areas of the Valley and, though many of these areas have been converted for agricultural purposes, these animals remain common. For reasons that remain unclear, vole population densities in any area may fluctuate widely from season to season and year to year. They are preyed upon by owls, hawks, and carnivorous mammals, and their parasites include fleas and ticks. These voles build burrows and complex tunnel networks, which they sometimes share with other burrowing animals. Relatively little is known about their behavior in the wild, because they are elusive and unlikely to enter traps.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Gray-tailed vole is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- House mouse with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Blackish deer mouse with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Thomas’s mosaic-tailed rat with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Silky mouse with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Mindoro striped rat weighting only 152 grams
- Oecomys superans weighting only 73 grams
- Pilliga mouse weighting only 10 grams
- Lesser mole-rat with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Spinifex hopping mouse with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Dusky-footed woodrat with 2 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Gray-tailed vole
Those animals also give birth to 4 babies at once:
- El Carrizo deer mouse
- Kellen’s dormouse
- New England cottontail
- Etruscan shrew
- Rock squirrel
- Alexander’s kusimanse
- Mexican spiny pocket mouse
- Bush dog
- Indian gerbil
- Darwin’s leaf-eared mouse
Animals with the same weight as a Gray-tailed vole
What other animals weight around 29 grams (0.06 lbs)?
- Winter white dwarf hamster weighting 30 grams
- Northern caenolestid weighting 31 grams
- Common vole weighting 26 grams
- Schreber’s yellow bat weighting 26 grams
- Akodon affinis weighting 24 grams
- Paraguayan fat-tailed mouse opossum weighting 34 grams
- Luzon Cordillera forest mouse weighting 34 grams
- Natal multimammate mouse weighting 30 grams
- Texas mouse weighting 27 grams
- Abrothrix andinus weighting 24 grams
Animals with the same size as a Gray-tailed vole
Also reaching around 11 cm (0′ 5″) in size do these animals:
- Chinese mole shrew gets as big as 9.4 cm (0′ 4″)
- Plains viscacha rat gets as big as 12.9 cm (0′ 6″)
- Bishop’s slender opossum gets as big as 10.3 cm (0′ 5″)
- Gleaning mouse gets as big as 10.2 cm (0′ 5″)
- Selangor pygmy flying squirrel gets as big as 8.8 cm (0′ 4″)
- Hartwig’s soft-furred mouse gets as big as 11.5 cm (0′ 5″)
- Mountain mosaic-tailed rat gets as big as 11.5 cm (0′ 5″)
- Stein’s paramelomys gets as big as 12.5 cm (0′ 5″)
- Sandstone false antechinus gets as big as 9.6 cm (0′ 4″)
- Panama slender opossum gets as big as 11.1 cm (0′ 5″)