How many baby Round-tailed ground squirrels are in a litter?
A Round-tailed ground squirrel (Spermophilus tereticaudus) usually gives birth to around 6 babies.With 1 litters per year, that sums up to a yearly offspring of 6 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 27 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 3 grams (0.01 lbs) and measure 5.5 cm (0′ 3″). They are a member of the Sciuridae family (genus: Spermophilus). An adult Round-tailed ground squirrel grows up to a size of 15.5 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 round-tailed ground squirrel (Xerospermophilus tereticaudus), known as “Ardillón cola redonda” in Spanish, live in the desert of the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico. They are called “ground squirrels” because they burrow in loose soil, often under mesquite trees and creosote bushes.
Other animals of the family Sciuridae
Round-tailed ground squirrel is a member of the Sciuridae, as are these animals:
- Junín red squirrel weighting only 482 grams
- Palawan montane squirrel raching a size of 21 cm (0′ 9″)
- Borneo black-banded squirrel with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Himalayan striped squirrel with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Ear-spot squirrel with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Bornean mountain ground squirrel weighting only 130 grams
- Culion tree squirrel raching a size of 21 cm (0′ 9″)
- Ochre bush squirrel with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Asia Minor ground squirrel with 5 babies per pregnancy
- Kinabalu squirrel with 3 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Round-tailed ground squirrel
Those animals also give birth to 6 babies at once:
- New Guinean quoll
- Perote ground squirrel
- Günther’s vole
- Wyoming pocket gopher
- Bobak marmot
- Chinese striped hamster
- Muskrat
- Harris’s antelope squirrel
- Woolly mouse opossum
- California ground squirrel
Animals with the same weight as a Round-tailed ground squirrel
What other animals weight around 148 grams (0.33 lbs)?
- Pygmy marmoset weighting 124 grams
- Phillips’s gerbil weighting 127 grams
- Val’s gundi weighting 174 grams
- Buettikofer’s epauletted fruit bat weighting 135 grams
- Guianan spear-nosed bat weighting 134 grams
- Lorentz’s mosaic-tailed rat weighting 150 grams
- Black rat weighting 142 grams
- Lesser hedgehog tenrec weighting 160 grams
- Perote ground squirrel weighting 140 grams
- Ferreira’s spiny tree-rat weighting 175 grams
Animals with the same size as a Round-tailed ground squirrel
Also reaching around 15.5 cm (0′ 7″) in size do these animals:
- Masked white-tailed rat gets as big as 13.5 cm (0′ 6″)
- Greater tree mouse gets as big as 14.4 cm (0′ 6″)
- Plains viscacha rat gets as big as 12.9 cm (0′ 6″)
- Sulawesi harpy fruit bat gets as big as 14.4 cm (0′ 6″)
- Luzon striped rat gets as big as 17.3 cm (0′ 7″)
- Short-tailed Talaud mosaic-tailed rat gets as big as 17.2 cm (0′ 7″)
- Palawan treeshrew gets as big as 18.5 cm (0′ 8″)
- Thirteen-lined ground squirrel gets as big as 13.7 cm (0′ 6″)
- Water vole (North America) gets as big as 15.4 cm (0′ 7″)
- Reddish tuco-tuco gets as big as 16.7 cm (0′ 7″)