How many baby Meerkats are in a litter?
A Meerkat (Suricata suricatta) usually gives birth to around 3 babies.With 1 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 3 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 77 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 30 grams (0.07 lbs) and measure 1.4 cm (0′ 1″). They are a member of the Herpestidae family (genus: Suricata). An adult Meerkat grows up to a size of 28.6 cm (1′ 0″).
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 meerkat (Suricata suricatta) or suricate is a small mongoose found in southern Africa. It is characterised by a broad head, large eyes, a pointed snout, long legs, a thin tapering tail and a brindled coat pattern. The head-and-body length is around 24–35 cm (9.4–13.8 in), and the weight is typically between 0.62 and 0.97 kg (1.4 and 2.1 lb). The coat is light grey to yellowish brown with alternate, poorly defined light and dark bands on the back. Meerkats have foreclaws adapted for digging and have the ability to thermoregulate to survive in their harsh, dry habitat. Three subspecies are recognised.Meerkats are eusocial, and form packs of two to 30 individuals each that occupy home ranges around 5 km2 (1.9 sq mi) large. There is a social hierarchy—generally dominant individuals in a pack breed and produce offspring, and the nonbreeding, subordinate members provide altruistic care to the pups. They live in rock crevices in stony, often calcareous areas and in large burrow systems in plains. The burrow systems, typically 5 m (16 ft) in diameter with around 15 openings, are large underground networks consisting of two to three levels of tunnels. These tunnels are around 7.5 cm (3.0 in) high at the top and wider below, and extend up to 1.5 m (4.9 ft) into the ground. Burrows have moderated internal temperatures and provide a comfortable microclimate that protects meerkats in harsh weather and at extreme temperatures. Meerkats are active during the day, mostly in the early morning and late afternoon; they remain continually alert and retreat to burrows (or ‘boltholes’) on sensing danger. They use a broad variety of calls to communicate among one another for different purposes, for example to raise alarm on sighting a predator. Primarily insectivorous, meerkats feed heavily on beetles and lepidopterans, though they also include amphibians, arthropods, small birds, reptiles and plant material in their diet. Breeding occurs round the year, with peaks during heavy rainfall; after a gestation of 60 to 70 days a litter of three to seven pups is born.Commonly found in arid, open habitats with little woody vegetation, meerkats occur in southwestern Botswana, western and southern Namibia, northern and western South Africa; the range barely extends into southwestern Angola. With no significant threats to the populations, the meerkat is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. Meerkats are widely depicted in television, movies and other media.
Other animals of the family Herpestidae
Meerkat is a member of the Herpestidae, as are these animals:
- Indian grey mongoose with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Angolan slender mongoose weighting only 750 grams
- Ring-tailed vontsira with 1 babies per pregnancy
- White-tailed mongoose with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Gambian mongoose weighting around 1.64 kilograms (3.62 lbs)
- Black-footed mongoose with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Pousargues’s mongoose with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Long-nosed mongoose weighting around 3 kilograms (6.61 lbs)
- Selous’s mongoose with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Bushy-tailed mongoose with 1 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Meerkat
Those animals also give birth to 3 babies at once:
- Fisher (animal)
- Dark kangaroo mouse
- Dusky hopping mouse
- True’s shrew mole
- Tullberg’s soft-furred mouse
- Striped hog-nosed skunk
- Hoary fox
- Woolly hare
- Greater Egyptian gerbil
- Desert cottontail
Animals that get as old as a Meerkat
Other animals that usually reach the age of 12.5 years:
- Blue duiker with 12 years
- Crab-eating raccoon with 14 years
- Red forest duiker with 15 years
- Calabar angwantibo with 13 years
- Taruca with 10.58 years
- Common noctule with 12 years
- Beira (antelope) with 14 years
- Patagonian mara with 14 years
- Bioko Allen’s bushbaby with 12 years
- Cape genet with 15 years
Animals with the same weight as a Meerkat
What other animals weight around 730 grams (1.61 lbs)?
- Western gray squirrel weighting 704 grams
- Black lion tamarin weighting 656 grams
- Superagüi lion tamarin weighting 605 grams
- Yellow ground squirrel weighting 779 grams
- Southern white-breasted hedgehog weighting 690 grams
- Brown hairy dwarf porcupine weighting 736 grams
- Xerus erythropus weighting 602 grams
- Guinea pig weighting 728 grams
- Central American squirrel monkey weighting 714 grams
- Northern greater galago weighting 812 grams
Animals with the same size as a Meerkat
Also reaching around 28.6 cm (1′ 0″) in size do these animals:
- Black-capped squirrel monkey gets as big as 30.9 cm (1′ 1″)
- Western gray squirrel gets as big as 29.4 cm (1′ 0″)
- Yellow-bellied weasel gets as big as 26 cm (0′ 11″)
- Epixerus gets as big as 28.8 cm (1′ 0″)
- Muskrat gets as big as 27.7 cm (0′ 11″)
- Basilan flying squirrel gets as big as 24.8 cm (0′ 10″)
- Western white-eared giant rat gets as big as 31 cm (1′ 1″)
- Painted ringtail possum gets as big as 26.5 cm (0′ 11″)
- Cape ground squirrel gets as big as 24.7 cm (0′ 10″)
- Northern glider gets as big as 25.5 cm (0′ 11″)