How many baby Spinifex hopping mouses are in a litter?
A Spinifex hopping mouse (Notomys alexis) usually gives birth to around 4 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 32 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 2 grams (0 lbs) and measure 3.5 cm (0′ 2″). They are a member of the Muridae family (genus: Notomys). An adult Spinifex hopping mouse grows up to a size of 10 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 spinifex hopping mouse (Notomys alexis), also known as the tarkawara or tarrkawarra, occurs throughout the central and western Australian arid zones, occupying both spinifex-covered sand flats and stabilised sand dunes, and loamy mulga and melaleuca flats.The population fluctuates greatly: in normal years it is sparsely distributed and probably confined to sandy country; after rain the population explodes and spreads to other types of habitat for a time. They are mostly seen at night, bounding across open ground on their large hind feet, with tails extended and the body almost horizontal. As semi-fossorial, burrowing surface foragers, the tiny hopping mice spend a great deal of energy not just foraging for food, but also transporting it back to their burrows. In fact, it was found that the total energy spent on transporting food in relation to energy investment on burrows far outweighed any other similar type of species (White, 2006).
Other animals of the family Muridae
Spinifex hopping mouse is a member of the Muridae, as are these animals:
- Shaw Mayer’s water rat raching a size of 13.1 cm (0′ 6″)
- Short-tailed Talaud mosaic-tailed rat raching a size of 17.2 cm (0′ 7″)
- Hairy-eared cerrado mouse weighting only 24 grams
- Brazilian shrew mouse with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Nayarit mouse weighting only 40 grams
- Rossel Island melomys raching a size of 13.9 cm (0′ 6″)
- Colombian forest mouse weighting only 19 grams
- Biting chinchilla mouse weighting only 82 grams
- Polynesian rat with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Bogotá grass mouse weighting only 13 grams
Animals that share a litter size with Spinifex hopping mouse
Those animals also give birth to 4 babies at once:
- Lodgepole chipmunk
- Nyika climbing mouse
- Lesser Egyptian gerbil
- Long-tailed giant rat
- Gray four-eyed opossum
- Pale fox
- Bush dog
- Giant forest hog
- Gray-tailed vole
- American mink
Animals that get as old as a Spinifex hopping mouse
Other animals that usually reach the age of 5.17 years:
- Gansu pika with 5 years
- Val’s gundi with 5 years
- Peters’s climbing rat with 5.33 years
- Stripe-faced dunnart with 4.83 years
- Virginia opossum with 5 years
- Sandhill dunnart with 5 years
- California ground squirrel with 5 years
- Otter civet with 5 years
- Mexican funnel-eared bat with 4.75 years
- Little free-tailed bat with 5 years
Animals with the same weight as a Spinifex hopping mouse
What other animals weight around 32 grams (0.07 lbs)?
- Natal multimammate mouse weighting 30 grams
- Northern grasshopper mouse weighting 27 grams
- Hummelinck’s vesper mouse weighting 27 grams
- Mexican vole weighting 34 grams
- Texas mouse weighting 27 grams
- Roraima mouse weighting 33 grams
- Wagner’s gerbil weighting 27 grams
- Brazilian shrew mouse weighting 36 grams
- Osgood’s mouse weighting 27 grams
- Paraguayan fat-tailed mouse opossum weighting 34 grams
Animals with the same size as a Spinifex hopping mouse
Also reaching around 10 cm (0′ 4″) in size do these animals:
- African giant shrew gets as big as 10.8 cm (0′ 5″)
- Cameroon soft-furred mouse gets as big as 11.5 cm (0′ 5″)
- Ihering’s three-striped opossum gets as big as 9 cm (0′ 4″)
- Phillips’s kangaroo rat gets as big as 9.6 cm (0′ 4″)
- Mountain spiny pocket mouse gets as big as 11 cm (0′ 5″)
- Serra do Mar grass mouse gets as big as 9.6 cm (0′ 4″)
- Marsh shrew gets as big as 8.5 cm (0′ 4″)
- Angolan rousette gets as big as 10.5 cm (0′ 5″)
- Greater spear-nosed bat gets as big as 10.7 cm (0′ 5″)
- San Diego pocket mouse gets as big as 8.3 cm (0′ 4″)