How many baby Ooldea dunnarts are in a litter?
A Ooldea dunnart (Sminthopsis ooldea) usually gives birth to around 7 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 20 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 5 grams (0.01 lbs) and measure 1.6 cm (0′ 1″). They are a member of the Dasyuridae family (genus: Sminthopsis). An adult Ooldea dunnart grows up to a size of 9.5 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 Ooldea dunnart (Sminthopsis ooldea), also called Troughton’s dunnart after the person who found the species, is an Australian marsupial similar to the hairy-footed dunnart. It is greyish-yellow on its upper body and white on the underside with dark patches on its crown, forehead and in front of the eyes, and a pink thinly furred carrot shaped tail. Its total length is 115–173 mm; its average body length is 55–80 mm with a tail of 60–93 mm. Its ear length is 14–17 mm. This dunnart weighs between 10 and 18 grams.
Other animals of the family Dasyuridae
Ooldea dunnart is a member of the Dasyuridae, as are these animals:
- Broad-striped dasyure with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Fat-tailed dunnart with 7 babies per pregnancy
- Parantechinus bilarni with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Fat-tailed false antechinus with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Stripe-faced dunnart with 7 babies per pregnancy
- New Guinean planigale weighting only 14 grams
- Lesser hairy-footed dunnart with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Narrow-nosed planigale with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Little long-tailed dunnart with 7 babies per pregnancy
- Common planigale with 7 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Ooldea dunnart
Those animals also give birth to 7 babies at once:
- Swamp antechinus
- Little ground squirrel
- Southern multimammate mouse
- Southern ningaui
- Lutrine opossum
- Little long-tailed dunnart
- European hamster
- Stripe-faced dunnart
- Pallas’s pika
- Lesser bandicoot rat
Animals that get as old as a Ooldea dunnart
Other animals that usually reach the age of 3 years:
- White-footed mouse with 3.17 years
- Parantechinus bilarni with 3 years
- South African pouched mouse with 2.75 years
- Little red kaluta with 3 years
- Dibbler with 3 years
- Alpine pika with 3 years
- Bower’s white-toothed rat with 2.83 years
- White-footed dunnart with 2.5 years
- Lowland streaked tenrec with 2.67 years
- Bicolored shrew with 3 years
Animals with the same weight as a Ooldea dunnart
What other animals weight around 12 grams (0.03 lbs)?
- Luzon shrew weighting 10 grams
- Yellow serotine weighting 10 grams
- Szechwan myotis weighting 11 grams
- Tacarcuna bat weighting 12 grams
- Darien harvest mouse weighting 12 grams
- California leaf-nosed bat weighting 11 grams
- Merida small-eared shrew weighting 12 grams
- Greater ghost bat weighting 12 grams
- Salt marsh harvest mouse weighting 10 grams
- Hinde’s lesser house bat weighting 10 grams