How many baby Mountain cottontails are in a litter?
A Mountain cottontail (Sylvilagus nuttallii) usually gives birth to around 4 babies.With 3 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 12 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 28 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 34 grams (0.07 lbs) and measure 11.2 cm (0′ 5″). They are a member of the Leporidae family (genus: Sylvilagus). An adult Mountain cottontail grows up to a size of 32.4 cm (1′ 1″).
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 mountain cottontail or Nuttall’s cottontail (Sylvilagus nuttallii) is a species of mammal in the family Leporidae. It is found in Canada and the United States.
Other animals of the family Leporidae
Mountain cottontail is a member of the Leporidae, as are these animals:
- Cape hare with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Japanese hare with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Burmese hare weighting around 2.27 kilograms (5 lbs)
- Hainan hare weighting around 1.52 kilograms (3.35 lbs)
- San José brush rabbit raching a size of 29.4 cm (1′ 0″)
- Broom hare with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Marsh rabbit with 2 babies per pregnancy
- White-sided jackrabbit with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Natal red rock hare with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Woolly hare with 3 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Mountain cottontail
Those animals also give birth to 4 babies at once:
- Ethiopian white-footed mouse
- Kemp’s gerbil
- Long-tailed giant rat
- Ningbing false antechinus
- Desert pygmy mouse
- Gray-tailed vole
- Plains pocket mouse
- New Holland mouse
- Iberian shrew
- Thomas’s pine vole
Animals with the same weight as a Mountain cottontail
What other animals weight around 803 grams (1.77 lbs)?
- Gunnison’s prairie dog weighting 798 grams
- Spix’s night monkey weighting 873 grams
- Maned rat weighting 755 grams
- Ring-tailed vontsira weighting 815 grams
- Red acouchi weighting 949 grams
- Arizona gray squirrel weighting 647 grams
- Lord Derby’s scaly-tailed squirrel weighting 665 grams
- Angolan slender mongoose weighting 750 grams
- Chiriqui pocket gopher weighting 650 grams
- Brown titi weighting 851 grams
Animals with the same size as a Mountain cottontail
Also reaching around 32.4 cm (1′ 1″) in size do these animals:
- Golden lion tamarin gets as big as 26.1 cm (0′ 11″)
- Coppery titi gets as big as 35.5 cm (1′ 2″)
- Slender mongoose gets as big as 33 cm (1′ 1″)
- Humboldt’s hog-nosed skunk gets as big as 35.4 cm (1′ 2″)
- Long-footed potoroo gets as big as 35.9 cm (1′ 3″)
- Northern sportive lemur gets as big as 28 cm (1′ 0″)
- Red-handed tamarin gets as big as 26.5 cm (0′ 11″)
- Muskrat gets as big as 27.7 cm (0′ 11″)
- Eastern barred bandicoot gets as big as 32.3 cm (1′ 1″)
- Reclusive ringtail possum gets as big as 33.9 cm (1′ 2″)