How many baby Long-tailed shrews are in a litter?
A Long-tailed shrew (Sorex gaspensis) usually gives birth to around 5 babies.
Upon birth, they weight 90 grams (0.2 lbs) and measure 2.5 cm (0′ 1″). They are a member of the Soricidae family (genus: Sorex). An adult Long-tailed shrew grows up to a size of 5.5 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.
The long-tailed shrew or rock shrew (Sorex dispar) is a small North American shrew found in Atlantic Canada and the Northeastern United States.This shrew is slate grey in colour with a pointed snout, a long tail, and lighter underparts. It is found on rocky slopes in mountainous areas along the Atlantic coast from Gaspé Peninsula, Quebec, and Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, to northern Georgia. It eats insects and spiders. Predators include hawks, owls, and snakes.
Other animals of the family Soricidae
Long-tailed shrew is a member of the Soricidae, as are these animals:
- Rainey’s shrew weighting only 14 grams
- Malayan pygmy shrew weighting only 5 grams
- Nigerian shrew weighting only 23 grams
- Sclater’s shrew weighting only 7 grams
- Savanna dwarf shrew weighting only 6 grams
- Preble’s shrew weighting only 3 grams
- Etruscan shrew with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Jouvenet’s shrew weighting only 9 grams
- Zarudny’s rock shrew with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Lowe’s shrew raching a size of 6.9 cm (0′ 3″)
Animals that share a litter size with Long-tailed shrew
Those animals also give birth to 5 babies at once:
- Mountain weasel
- Cutch rat
- Pygmy rabbit
- Arctic hare
- Bobrinski’s jerboa
- American water shrew
- Meadow vole
- Grey red-backed vole
- Long-tailed dwarf hamster
- Townsend’s vole
Animals with the same weight as a Long-tailed shrew
What other animals weight around 3 grams (0.01 lbs)?
- Thick-thumbed myotis weighting 3 grams
- Least shrew tenrec weighting 3 grams
- Banana pipistrelle weighting 3 grams
- Spurrell’s woolly bat weighting 3 grams
- Arabian pipistrelle weighting 3 grams
- Somali serotine weighting 3 grams
- Thumbless bat weighting 3 grams
- Little forest bat weighting 3 grams
- Heller’s pipistrelle weighting 3 grams
- Peters’s disk-winged bat weighting 3 grams
Animals with the same size as a Long-tailed shrew
Also reaching around 5.5 cm (0′ 3″) in size do these animals:
- Fat mouse gets as big as 5.8 cm (0′ 3″)
- Mindanao pygmy fruit bat gets as big as 6.4 cm (0′ 3″)
- Merriam’s shrew gets as big as 6 cm (0′ 3″)
- American pygmy shrew gets as big as 5.3 cm (0′ 3″)
- Rüppell’s pipistrelle gets as big as 4.4 cm (0′ 2″)
- Tien Shan shrew gets as big as 6.5 cm (0′ 3″)
- Merriam’s kangaroo rat gets as big as 4.9 cm (0′ 2″)
- Long-tailed shrew gets as big as 6.3 cm (0′ 3″)
- Wagner’s mustached bat gets as big as 4.5 cm (0′ 2″)
- Cuban flower bat gets as big as 6.3 cm (0′ 3″)