How many baby Plateau pikas are in a litter?
A Plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) 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 22 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 11 grams (0.02 lbs) and measure 5.7 cm (0′ 3″). They are a member of the Ochotonidae family (genus: Ochotona). An adult Plateau pika grows up to a size of 17 cm (0′ 7″).
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 plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae), also known as the black-lipped pika, is a species of mammal in the pika family, Ochotonidae.It is a small diurnal and non-hibernating mammal weighing about 140 g when fully grown. The animals are reddish tan on the top-side with more of a whitish yellow on their under-belly.They prefer to live in elevations of 3,100 to 5,000 m, mostly in the Tibetan Plateau, which is where the common name originates from. The species is found in China, Pakistan, India, and Nepal in high alpine deserts, steppe and meadows, as well as tropical and subtropical montane forests.
Other animals of the family Ochotonidae
Plateau pika is a member of the Ochotonidae, as are these animals:
- Royle’s pika with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Gaoligong pika raching a size of 16.7 cm (0′ 7″)
- Nubra pika raching a size of 7.5 cm (0′ 3″)
- Himalayan pika with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Pallas’s pika with 7 babies per pregnancy
- Chinese red pika raching a size of 24.5 cm (0′ 10″)
- Daurian pika with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Afghan pika with 6 babies per pregnancy
- Koslov’s pika with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Ili pika raching a size of 20.3 cm (0′ 8″)
Animals that share a litter size with Plateau pika
Those animals also give birth to 4 babies at once:
- Nolthenius’s long-tailed climbing mouse
- Thomas’s pine vole
- Utah prairie dog
- Senegal gerbil
- Sundevall’s jird
- Peromyscus maniculatus
- Groundhog
- Hooded skunk
- Cerradomys subflavus
- New Holland mouse
Animals with the same weight as a Plateau pika
What other animals weight around 160 grams (0.35 lbs)?
- Striped bush squirrel weighting 160 grams
- Northern flying squirrel weighting 138 grams
- Knox Jones’s pocket gopher weighting 172 grams
- Spectral tarsier weighting 166 grams
- Perote ground squirrel weighting 140 grams
- Pygmy ringtail possum weighting 152 grams
- Island mouse weighting 164 grams
- Greater fairy armadillo weighting 130 grams
- Buller’s pocket gopher weighting 150 grams
- Magdalena rat weighting 130 grams
Animals with the same size as a Plateau pika
Also reaching around 17 cm (0′ 7″) in size do these animals:
- Bushy-tailed opossum gets as big as 17.6 cm (0′ 7″)
- Steinbach’s tuco-tuco gets as big as 19.6 cm (0′ 8″)
- Dusky bushbaby gets as big as 16 cm (0′ 7″)
- Ribboned rope squirrel gets as big as 16.7 cm (0′ 7″)
- Pygmy ringtail possum gets as big as 19.8 cm (0′ 8″)
- Dorothy’s slender opossum gets as big as 15.2 cm (0′ 6″)
- Royle’s pika gets as big as 17.7 cm (0′ 7″)
- Long-footed treeshrew gets as big as 18.5 cm (0′ 8″)
- Moncton’s mosaic-tailed rat gets as big as 14.2 cm (0′ 6″)
- Speckled dasyure gets as big as 19.6 cm (0′ 8″)