How many baby Southern multimammate mouses are in a litter?
A Southern multimammate mouse (Mastomys coucha) usually gives birth to around 7 babies.
Upon birth, they weight 2 grams (0 lbs) and measure 8.9 cm (0′ 4″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Mastomys). An adult Southern multimammate mouse grows up to a size of 45.1 cm (1′ 6″).
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 southern multimammate mouse or southern African mastomys (Mastomys coucha) is a species of rodent in the family Muridae which is endemic to southern Africa (Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe). It is called a multimammate mouse because it can have 8 to 12 pairs of mammae (milk producing glands), in comparison other mouse species only have 5 pairs.
Other animals of the family Muridae
Southern multimammate mouse is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Indomalayan pencil-tailed tree mouse with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Large mosaic-tailed rat with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Long-footed rat raching a size of 15.7 cm (0′ 7″)
- Golden spiny mouse with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Woodland thicket rat with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Sloggett’s vlei rat with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Bartels’s spiny rat weighting only 88 grams
- Coues’s climbing mouse weighting only 89 grams
- Fossorial giant rat weighting only 168 grams
- Yellow-bellied brush-furred rat with 1 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Southern multimammate mouse
Those animals also give birth to 7 babies at once:
- Fat-tailed dunnart
- Taiga shrew
- Gray short-tailed opossum
- Drylands vesper mouse
- Stolička’s mountain vole
- Red-tailed phascogale
- Northern red-sided opossum
- Little ground squirrel
- Swamp antechinus
- Common opossum
Animals with the same weight as a Southern multimammate mouse
What other animals weight around 53 grams (0.12 lbs)?
- Eastern tube-nosed bat weighting 48 grams
- Mexican volcano mouse weighting 44 grams
- Champion’s tree mouse weighting 50 grams
- Chestnut tree mouse weighting 46 grams
- Shortridge’s multimammate mouse weighting 46 grams
- Feather-tailed possum weighting 53 grams
- Brock’s yellow-eared bat weighting 48 grams
- Small five-toed jerboa weighting 59 grams
- Ega long-tongued bat weighting 49 grams
- Gray-cheeked flying squirrel weighting 63 grams