How many baby Plains pocket mouses are in a litter?
A Plains pocket mouse (Perognathus flavescens) usually gives birth to around 4 babies.With 2 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 8 babies.
Upon birth, they weight 37 grams (0.08 lbs) and measure 1.3 cm (0′ 1″). They are a member of the Heteromyidae family (genus: Perognathus). An adult Plains pocket mouse grows up to a size of 6.9 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 plains pocket mouse (Perognathus flavescens) is a heteromyid rodent of North America. It ranges from southwestern Minnesota and southeastern North Dakota to northern Texas east of the Rockies, and from northern Utah and Colorado to northern Chihuahua west of the Rockies.It has soft silky fur and grows to be 5 inches (13 cm) long, although nearly half of that is the tail.They often live directly underneath Spanish bayonet or prickly pear plants. They are accustomed to sandy soil and eat mostly seeds, large and small grasses and small leaves of plants. Some food found in their cheek pouches are: seeds of needle grass (Stipa), bind weed, sandbur grass, a small bean (probably Astragalus), and sedge (Cyperus). Even those caught in grain fields usually have their pouches filled with weed seeds. Seeds of two species of pigeon grass, a few other grasses, and wild buckwheat have been found in their burrows.Their breeding season is mainly July to August and the females tend to have 4 embryos at a time. Other information about this animal is scarce. Media related to Perognathus flavescens at Wikimedia Commons
Other animals of the family Heteromyidae
Plains pocket mouse is a member of the Heteromyidae, as are these animals:
- Nelson’s pocket mouse with 3 babies per pregnancy
- San José Island kangaroo rat weighting only 38 grams
- Phillips’s kangaroo rat with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Desert kangaroo rat with 3 babies per pregnancy
- San Quintin kangaroo rat weighting only 84 grams
- Panamanian spiny pocket mouse with 3 babies per pregnancy
- San Joaquin pocket mouse with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Pale kangaroo mouse with 3 babies per pregnancy
- White-eared pocket mouse weighting only 23 grams
- Nelson’s spiny pocket mouse weighting only 67 grams
Animals that share a litter size with Plains pocket mouse
Those animals also give birth to 4 babies at once:
- Yellow-bellied marmot
- Bank vole
- Bushveld gerbil
- Silky mouse
- Pygmy gerbil
- Visayan warty pig
- Great Basin pocket mouse
- Wild boar
- Thomas’s pine vole
- Tien Shan red-backed vole
Animals with the same weight as a Plains pocket mouse
What other animals weight around 9 grams (0.02 lbs)?
- Baird’s shrew weighting 8 grams
- Fischer’s little fruit bat weighting 9 grams
- Evening bat weighting 9 grams
- Drouhard’s shrew tenrec weighting 10 grams
- Lesser long-tongued bat weighting 8 grams
- Alpine shrew weighting 8 grams
- Swamp musk shrew weighting 10 grams
- Mount Kenya mole shrew weighting 9 grams
- Hinde’s lesser house bat weighting 10 grams
- Large-footed bat weighting 10 grams
Animals with the same size as a Plains pocket mouse
Also reaching around 6.9 cm (0′ 3″) in size do these animals:
- Cuban flower bat gets as big as 6.3 cm (0′ 3″)
- Mexican small-eared shrew gets as big as 6.1 cm (0′ 3″)
- Trident bat gets as big as 5.6 cm (0′ 3″)
- Southern pygmy mouse gets as big as 7.5 cm (0′ 3″)
- Common tube-nosed fruit bat gets as big as 8.2 cm (0′ 4″)
- Peters’s dwarf epauletted fruit bat gets as big as 7.6 cm (0′ 3″)
- Northern groove-toothed shrew mouse gets as big as 8.1 cm (0′ 4″)
- White-eared pocket mouse gets as big as 7.5 cm (0′ 3″)
- Lesser tube-nosed fruit bat gets as big as 7.7 cm (0′ 4″)
- Mount Isarog shrew-mouse gets as big as 7 cm (0′ 3″)