How many baby Lesser short-tailed gerbils are in a litter?
A Lesser short-tailed gerbil (Gerbillus simoni) usually gives birth to around 4 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 25 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 2 grams (0 lbs) and measure 3.3 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Gerbillus). An adult Lesser short-tailed gerbil grows up to a size of 10.1 cm (0′ 4″).
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 short-tailed gerbil (Dipodillus simoni) is distributed mainly from eastern Morocco to Egypt. It is also known as Simon’s dipodil. After morphological and molecular studies in 2010 Dipodillus was ranged as a subgenus of Gerbillus, and Dipodillus simoni was renamed into Gerbillus simoni.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Lesser short-tailed gerbil is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Red spiny rat with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Yellow-bellied climbing mouse weighting only 59 grams
- Delicate mouse with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Puno grass mouse weighting only 30 grams
- Oecomys rutilus weighting only 73 grams
- Mexican vole with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Brazilian shrew mouse with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Little native mouse with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Black rat with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Crete spiny mouse weighting only 62 grams
Animals that share a litter size with Lesser short-tailed gerbil
Those animals also give birth to 4 babies at once:
- Darwin’s leaf-eared mouse
- Chestnut white-bellied rat
- Allen’s chipmunk
- Dice’s cottontail
- Yellow-bellied marmot
- Bushveld gerbil
- Altai mole
- Dhole
- Gray four-eyed opossum
- Lesser Egyptian gerbil
Animals with the same weight as a Lesser short-tailed gerbil
What other animals weight around 17 grams (0.04 lbs)?
- Greater forest shrew weighting 16 grams
- Malayan slit-faced bat weighting 14 grams
- Fat-tailed dunnart weighting 16 grams
- Gray short-tailed bat weighting 15 grams
- Melissa’s yellow-eared bat weighting 16 grams
- Buffy flower bat weighting 16 grams
- Broad-toothed tailless bat weighting 15 grams
- Davies’s big-eared bat weighting 18 grams
- Lesser yellow bat weighting 19 grams
- Spiny pocket mouse weighting 16 grams