It is hard to guess what a Desert cottontail weights. But we have the answer:
An adult Desert cottontail (Sylvilagus audubonii) on average weights 882 grams (1.94 lbs).
The Desert cottontail is from the family Leporidae (genus: Sylvilagus). It is usually born with about 34 grams (0.07 lbs). When reaching adult age, they grow up to 32.5 cm (1′ 1″). Usually, Desert cottontails have 3 babies per litter.
As a reference: An average human weights in at 62 kg (137 lbs) and reaches an average size of 1.65m (5′ 5″). Humans spend 280 days (40 weeks) in the womb of their mother and reach around 75 years of age.
The desert cottontail (Sylvilagus audubonii), also known as Audubon’s cottontail, is a New World cottontail rabbit, and a member of the family Leporidae. Unlike the European rabbit, they do not form social burrow systems, but compared with some other leporids, they are extremely tolerant of other individuals in their vicinity.Cottontails give birth to their kits in burrows vacated by other mammals. They sometimes cool off, or take refuge in scratched out shallow created depressions of their own making, using their front paws like a back hoe. They are not usually active in the middle of the day, but can be observed foraging in the early morning, and early evening. Cottontails are rarely found out of their burrows looking for food on windy days, because the wind interferes with their ability to hear approaching predators, their primary defense mechanism.The dental formula for Sylvilagus audubonii is 2.0.3.31.0.3.3= 28. All species under the family Leporidae have the same dental formula.
Animals of the same family as a Desert cottontail
We found other animals of the Leporidae family:
- Amami rabbit with a size of 44.4 cm (1′ 6″)
- Yarkand hare bringing 1.47 kilos (3.24 lbs) to the scale
- Scrub hare bringing 2.6 kilos (5.73 lbs) to the scale
- Sumatran striped rabbit bringing 1.51 kilos (3.33 lbs) to the scale
- Volcano rabbit with a weight of 465 grams
- African savanna hare bringing 1.76 kilos (3.88 lbs) to the scale
- Smith’s red rock hare bringing 2.25 kilos (4.96 lbs) to the scale
- European rabbit bringing 1.59 kilos (3.51 lbs) to the scale
- Yunnan hare bringing 2.02 kilos (4.45 lbs) to the scale
- European hare bringing 3.82 kilos (8.42 lbs) to the scale
Animals with the same weight as a Desert cottontail
As a comparison, here are some other animals that weight as much as the Sylvilagus audubonii:
- Mexican prairie dog bringing 900 grams to the scale
- Ring-tailed vontsira bringing 815 grams to the scale
- Tres Marias rabbit bringing 964 grams to the scale
- Chinese ferret-badger bringing 939 grams to the scale
- Three-striped night monkey bringing 912 grams to the scale
- Brown hairy dwarf porcupine bringing 736 grams to the scale
- Black squirrel monkey bringing 784 grams to the scale
- Eastern woolly lemur with a weight of 1.06 kilos (2.34 lbs)
- Mountain beaver bringing 806 grams to the scale
- Raffray’s bandicoot bringing 905 grams to the scale
Animals with the same size as a Desert cottontail
Not that size really matters, but it makes things comparable. So here are a couple of animals that are as big as Desert cottontail:
- Eastern common cuscus with a size of 38.4 cm (1′ 4″)
- Brown greater galago with a size of 30.7 cm (1′ 1″)
- Javan mongoose with a size of 27.5 cm (0′ 11″)
- Eastern woolly lemur with a size of 27.5 cm (0′ 11″)
- Weyland ringtail possum with a size of 31 cm (1′ 1″)
- Abert’s squirrel with a size of 26.9 cm (0′ 11″)
- Northern sportive lemur with a size of 28 cm (1′ 0″)
- Arctic ground squirrel with a size of 27.9 cm (0′ 11″)
- Northern brown bandicoot with a size of 35.4 cm (1′ 2″)
- Patagonian weasel with a size of 32.4 cm (1′ 1″)
Animals with the same litter size as a Desert cottontail
Here is a list of animals that have the same number of babies per litter (3) as a Desert cottontail: