How many baby Meadow jumping mouses are in a litter?
A Meadow jumping mouse (Zapus hudsonius) usually gives birth to around 5 babies.With 2 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 10 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 18 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 6.34 kg (13.99 lbs) and measure 11.1 cm (0′ 5″). They are a member of the Dipodidae family (genus: Zapus). An adult Meadow jumping mouse grows up to a size of 8.6 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 meadow jumping mouse (Zapus hudsonius) is the most widely distributed mouse in the subfamily Zapodinae. Its range extends from the Atlantic coast in the east to the Great Plains west, and from the arctic tree lines in Canada and Alaska to the north, and Georgia, Alabama, Arizona, and New Mexico to the south. In mid-2014, the New Mexico subspecies of the meadow jumping mouse, Zapus hudsonius luteus, was listed as an endangered species under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Other animals of the family Dipodidae
Meadow jumping mouse is a member of the Dipodidae, as are these animals:
- Lichtenstein’s jerboa with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Pacific jumping mouse with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Western jumping mouse with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Severtzov’s jerboa with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Thick-tailed three-toed jerboa with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Great jerboa with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Lesser Egyptian jerboa with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Southern birch mouse weighting only 11 grams
- Blanford’s jerboa with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Four-toed jerboa weighting only 52 grams
Animals that share a litter size with Meadow jumping mouse
Those animals also give birth to 5 babies at once:
- Piebald shrew
- Northwestern deer mouse
- Olive grass mouse
- Least weasel
- Tate’s woolly mouse opossum
- House mouse
- Buxton’s jird
- Long-tailed dwarf hamster
- Northwestern deer mouse
- Edible dormouse
Animals that get as old as a Meadow jumping mouse
Other animals that usually reach the age of 5 years:
- Woodland jumping mouse with 4 years
- European hamster with 4 years
- Steppe pika with 4 years
- Woolley’s false antechinus with 4 years
- Desert hedgehog with 4.5 years
- Common sheath-tailed bat with 5 years
- Fat-tailed gerbil with 4.33 years
- Eastern barred bandicoot with 5.5 years
- Brown four-eyed opossum with 4 years
- Val’s gundi with 5 years
Animals with the same weight as a Meadow jumping mouse
What other animals weight around 18 grams (0.04 lbs)?
- Juliana’s golden mole weighting 21 grams
- Javan slit-faced bat weighting 17 grams
- Buffy flower bat weighting 16 grams
- Black-capped fruit bat weighting 17 grams
- Blackish white-toothed shrew weighting 20 grams
- Schultz’s round-eared bat weighting 17 grams
- Russet free-tailed bat weighting 16 grams
- One-toothed shrew mouse weighting 21 grams
- Desert dormouse weighting 17 grams
- Moss-forest blossom bat weighting 20 grams
Animals with the same size as a Meadow jumping mouse
Also reaching around 8.6 cm (0′ 4″) in size do these animals:
- Long-eared flying mouse gets as big as 8.7 cm (0′ 4″)
- Common tube-nosed fruit bat gets as big as 8.2 cm (0′ 4″)
- Ammodile gets as big as 9.5 cm (0′ 4″)
- Somali serotine gets as big as 8.4 cm (0′ 4″)
- Dickey’s deer mouse gets as big as 10 cm (0′ 4″)
- Moss-forest blossom bat gets as big as 6.9 cm (0′ 3″)
- Campbell’s dwarf hamster gets as big as 9.1 cm (0′ 4″)
- Greenish naked-backed fruit bat gets as big as 8.9 cm (0′ 4″)
- Himalayan shrew gets as big as 9.8 cm (0′ 4″)
- Nayarit mouse gets as big as 9.9 cm (0′ 4″)