How many baby Taiga shrews are in a litter?
A Taiga shrew (Sorex isodon) usually gives birth to around 7 babies.
Each of those little ones spend around 18 days as a fetus before they are released into the wild. Upon birth, they weight 90 grams (0.2 lbs) and measure 2.5 cm (0′ 1″). They are a member of the Soricidae family (genus: Sorex). An adult Taiga shrew grows up to a size of 7.5 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 taiga shrew (Sorex isodon), also known as the even-toothed shrew can achieve a body length of about 67 millimeters, with a tail of about 43 millimeters. This shrew is very similar to the long-clawed shrew. This species inhabits forested mountain valleys, and is found across northern Eurasia. It ranges from the Baltic Sea area through the Lake Baikal region of Siberia into the Russian Far East and along the Baekdudaegan mountains of the Korean Peninsula.
Other animals of the family Soricidae
Taiga shrew is a member of the Soricidae, as are these animals:
- Trowbridge’s shrew with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Bottego’s shrew with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Sahelian tiny shrew weighting only 6 grams
- Goodwin’s broad-clawed shrew weighting only 7 grams
- Transcaucasian water shrew raching a size of 8.6 cm (0′ 4″)
- Fog shrew weighting only 8 grams
- Lesser dwarf shrew with 3 babies per pregnancy
- Climbing shrew with 1 babies per pregnancy
- African black shrew with 2 babies per pregnancy
- Asian house shrew with 3 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Taiga shrew
Those animals also give birth to 7 babies at once:
- Pallas’s pika
- Dibbler
- European hamster
- Common planigale
- Gray short-tailed opossum
- Little ground squirrel
- Prairie shrew
- Vinogradov’s jird
- Linnaeus’s mouse opossum
- Sakhalin vole
Animals with the same weight as a Taiga shrew
What other animals weight around 12 grams (0.03 lbs)?
- Peters’s mouse weighting 11 grams
- Black-gilded pipistrelle weighting 10 grams
- Smaller horseshoe bat weighting 10 grams
- Micronycteris brachyotis weighting 10 grams
- Lesser mouse-tailed bat weighting 13 grams
- Oldfield mouse weighting 14 grams
- Western broad-nosed bat weighting 11 grams
- New Guinean planigale weighting 14 grams
- Dark kangaroo mouse weighting 12 grams
- Dollman’s tree mouse weighting 12 grams
Animals with the same size as a Taiga shrew
Also reaching around 7.5 cm (0′ 3″) in size do these animals:
- Montane grass mouse gets as big as 7.5 cm (0′ 3″)
- Gansu shrew gets as big as 8 cm (0′ 4″)
- Nelson’s pocket mouse gets as big as 7.9 cm (0′ 4″)
- Inquisitive shrew mole gets as big as 7.5 cm (0′ 3″)
- Olive-backed pocket mouse gets as big as 6.9 cm (0′ 3″)
- Large-eared tenrec gets as big as 7.1 cm (0′ 3″)
- San Joaquin pocket mouse gets as big as 7.2 cm (0′ 3″)
- Seba’s short-tailed bat gets as big as 6 cm (0′ 3″)
- Japanese dormouse gets as big as 7.2 cm (0′ 3″)
- Naked-rumped tomb bat gets as big as 8.5 cm (0′ 4″)