How many baby Long-tailed shrews are in a litter?
A Long-tailed shrew (Sorex dispar) usually gives birth to around 4 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 6.3 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:
- Peters’s musk shrew with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Yankari shrew weighting only 5 grams
- Kongana shrew weighting only 5 grams
- Marsh shrew weighting only 15 grams
- Blackish small-eared shrew weighting only 8 grams
- Volcano shrew weighting only 3 grams
- Smoky shrew with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Grant’s forest shrew with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Eurasian water shrew with 6 babies per pregnancy
- Japanese water shrew weighting only 35 grams
Animals that share a litter size with Long-tailed shrew
Those animals also give birth to 4 babies at once:
- Australian swamp rat
- Akodon boliviensis
- Northern pika
- North African gerbil
- Ethiopian white-footed mouse
- Mexican prairie dog
- Kellen’s dormouse
- Dhole
- Short-tailed bandicoot rat
- Gray-collared chipmunk
Animals with the same weight as a Long-tailed shrew
What other animals weight around 4 grams (0.01 lbs)?
- Rusty pipistrelle weighting 4 grams
- Elegant myotis weighting 4 grams
- Saussure’s shrew weighting 4 grams
- California myotis weighting 4 grams
- Groove-toothed bat weighting 4 grams
- Crawford’s gray shrew weighting 4 grams
- Brown tube-nosed bat weighting 4 grams
- Percival’s trident bat weighting 4 grams
- Slender shrew weighting 4 grams
- Lesser bamboo bat weighting 4 grams
Animals with the same size as a Long-tailed shrew
Also reaching around 6.3 cm (0′ 3″) in size do these animals:
- Greater false vampire bat gets as big as 7.3 cm (0′ 3″)
- Sundevall’s roundleaf bat gets as big as 5.4 cm (0′ 3″)
- Seychelles sheath-tailed bat gets as big as 6 cm (0′ 3″)
- Long-clawed shrew gets as big as 7.5 cm (0′ 3″)
- Merriam’s shrew gets as big as 6 cm (0′ 3″)
- Madagascar sucker-footed bat gets as big as 5.8 cm (0′ 3″)
- Little yellow-shouldered bat gets as big as 6.5 cm (0′ 3″)
- Dark kangaroo mouse gets as big as 7.2 cm (0′ 3″)
- Natal multimammate mouse gets as big as 6 cm (0′ 3″)
- Southern pygmy mouse gets as big as 7.5 cm (0′ 3″)