How many baby Lesser bandicoot rats are in a litter?
A Lesser bandicoot rat (Bandicota bengalensis) usually gives birth to around 7 babies.With 5 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 35 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 18 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 4 grams (0.01 lbs) and measure 4.7 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Bandicota). An adult Lesser bandicoot rat grows up to a size of 4 cm (0′ 2″).
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 lesser bandicoot rat, Sindh rice rat or Indian mole-rat (Bandicota bengalensis) is a giant rat of Southern Asia, not related to the true bandicoots which are marsupials. They can be up to 40 cm long (including the tail), are considered a pest in the cereal crops and gardens of India and Sri Lanka, and emit piglike grunts when attacking. The name bandicoot is derived from the Telugu language word pandikokku, which translates loosely to “pig-rat”. Like the better known rats in the genus Rattus, bandicoot rats are members of the family Muridae. Their fur is dark or (rarely) pale brown dorsally, occasionally blackish, and light to dark grey ventrally. The head-body length is around 250 mm, and the uniformly dark tail is shorter than the head-body length.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Lesser bandicoot rat is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Luzon montane forest mouse weighting only 34 grams
- Lindbergh’s grass mouse weighting only 26 grams
- Boehm’s gerbil with 4 babies per pregnancy
- White-tailed rat with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Bolivian big-eared mouse with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Burrowing chinchilla mouse weighting only 83 grams
- Mittendorf’s striped grass mouse weighting only 41 grams
- Gerbil leaf-eared mouse weighting only 17 grams
- Akodon azarae with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Rossel Island melomys raching a size of 13.9 cm (0′ 6″)
Animals that share a litter size with Lesser bandicoot rat
Those animals also give birth to 7 babies at once:
- Washington ground squirrel
- Long-tailed planigale
- Ooldea dunnart
- Stolička’s mountain vole
- Northern Idaho ground squirrel
- Long-tailed ground squirrel
- Vinogradov’s jird
- Tawny-bellied cotton rat
- Swamp antechinus
- Piute ground squirrel
Animals with the same weight as a Lesser bandicoot rat
What other animals weight around 227 grams (0.5 lbs)?
- Ihering’s Atlantic spiny rat weighting 221 grams
- Round-tailed muskrat weighting 265 grams
- Moon-toothed degu weighting 200 grams
- Little golden-mantled flying fox weighting 184 grams
- Ochre mole-rat weighting 200 grams
- Mzab gundi weighting 194 grams
- Argentine tuco-tuco weighting 221 grams
- Four-toed elephant shrew weighting 201 grams
- Turkish hamster weighting 198 grams
- Dwarf scaly-tailed squirrel weighting 250 grams