How many baby Highveld gerbils are in a litter?
A Highveld gerbil (Gerbilliscus brantsii) usually gives birth to around 2 babies.With 4 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 8 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 22 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 5 grams (0.01 lbs) and measure 3.6 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Gerbilliscus). An adult Highveld gerbil grows up to a size of 15 cm (0′ 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 Highveld gerbil (Gerbilliscus brantsii) is a species of gerbil found in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Its natural habitats are dry savanna, temperate shrubland, subtropical or tropical dry shrubland, temperate grassland, and temperate desert. This is a common species with a wide range and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated it as being of “least concern”.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Highveld gerbil is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Oecomys phaeotis weighting only 73 grams
- Setzer’s pygmy mouse weighting only 6 grams
- Oligoryzomys magellanicus weighting only 25 grams
- Central pebble-mound mouse weighting only 12 grams
- Gambian pouched rat with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Southern African spiny mouse with 2 babies per pregnancy
- El Carrizo deer mouse with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Glacier rat with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Arianus’s rat weighting only 70 grams
- Cutch rat with 5 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Highveld gerbil
Those animals also give birth to 2 babies at once:
- Northern yellow bat
- Pygmy rock mouse
- Afghan vole
- Rock hyrax
- Banded mongoose
- Greater dwarf lemur
- Brown hyena
- Eastern long-eared bat
- Eastern rat
- Eastern gray squirrel
Animals with the same weight as a Highveld gerbil
What other animals weight around 89 grams (0.2 lbs)?
- Chelemys macronyx weighting 72 grams
- White-bellied mosaic-tailed rat weighting 104 grams
- Commerson’s roundleaf bat weighting 92 grams
- Sooretamys weighting 100 grams
- Pallid Atlantic Forest rat weighting 90 grams
- Lesser hamster-rat weighting 75 grams
- Northern pocket gopher weighting 105 grams
- Ashy-bellied Oldfield mouse weighting 77 grams
- Tsing-ling pika weighting 105 grams
- Low’s squirrel weighting 85 grams