It is hard to guess what a Pacarana weights. But we have the answer:
An adult Pacarana (Dinomys branickii) on average weights 12.5 kg (27.56 lbs).
The Pacarana is from the family Dinomyidae (genus: Dinomys). It is usually born with about 769 grams (1.7 lbs). They can live for up to 9.33 years. When reaching adult age, they grow up to 75 cm (2′ 6″). Usually, Pacaranas have 1 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 pacarana (Dinomys branickii) is a rare and slow-moving hystricognath rodent indigenous to South America. Native Tupi people call it the pacarana (false paca) because it is superficially similar to the paca, a different rodent which is not in the same family. The pacarana has a chunky body and is large for a rodent, weighing up to 15 kg (33 lb) and measuring up to 79 cm (31 in) in length, not including the thick, furry tail.The pacarana is nocturnal and is found only in tropical forests of the western Amazon River basin and adjacent foothills of the Andes Mountains. It ranges from northwestern Venezuela and Colombia to western Bolivia, including the Yungas. It is common in Cotapata National Park in Bolivia.The pacarana is the sole extant member of the rodent family Dinomyidae in the infraorder Caviomorpha; the paca that it resembles in appearance is in a different Caviomorph family, the Cuniculidae. Initially, the pacarana was regarded as a member of the superfamily Muroidea, that includes the true mice, but that view was abandoned in the face of evidence that suggests that the pacarana is in the family Dinomyidae together with extinct animals such as Phoberomys pattersoni and Josephoartigasia monesi, prehistoric giant rodents that lived in South America several million years ago.Pacaranas typically are found in family groups of four or five.
Animals with the same weight as a Pacarana
As a comparison, here are some other animals that weight as much as the Dinomys branickii:
- Swamp wallaby with a weight of 15 kilos (33.07 lbs)
- Black musk deer with a weight of 13.6 kilos (29.98 lbs)
- African civet with a weight of 12.09 kilos (26.65 lbs)
- Siamang with a weight of 10.84 kilos (23.9 lbs)
- Bennett’s tree-kangaroo with a weight of 10.48 kilos (23.1 lbs)
- Marine otter with a weight of 11.2 kilos (24.69 lbs)
- Side-striped jackal with a weight of 10.4 kilos (22.93 lbs)
- Toolache wallaby with a weight of 10 kilos (22.05 lbs)
- Tibetan macaque with a weight of 10.6 kilos (23.37 lbs)
- Red-flanked duiker with a weight of 12.06 kilos (26.59 lbs)
Animals with the same size as a Pacarana
Not that size really matters, but it makes things comparable. So here are a couple of animals that are as big as Pacarana:
- Siberian musk deer with a size of 90 cm (3′ 0″)
- Water chevrotain with a size of 75 cm (2′ 6″)
- Grizzled tree-kangaroo with a size of 71.7 cm (2′ 5″)
- Fishing cat with a size of 77.9 cm (2′ 7″)
- Blue duiker with a size of 69.2 cm (2′ 4″)
- Pampas cat with a size of 61.6 cm (2′ 1″)
- Hose’s palm civet with a size of 60.1 cm (2′ 0″)
- Black musk deer with a size of 90 cm (3′ 0″)
- Culpeo with a size of 72.4 cm (2′ 5″)
- Linnaeus’s two-toed sloth with a size of 69 cm (2′ 4″)
Animals with the same litter size as a Pacarana
Here is a list of animals that have the same number of babies per litter (1) as a Pacarana:
- Soemmerring’s gazelle
- Earless water rat
- Oncilla
- Cape elephant shrew
- Asian elephant
- Angolan free-tailed bat
- Whiskered flying squirrel
- Gayal
- Roan antelope
- Sika deer
Animals with the same life expectancy as a Pacarana
Completely different animals, but becoming as old as a Pacarana:
- Jamaican fruit bat with an average maximal age of 10 years
- Speke’s pectinator with an average maximal age of 10 years
- Fisher (animal) with an average maximal age of 10.08 years
- Greater spear-nosed bat with an average maximal age of 10 years
- American mink with an average maximal age of 10 years
- Central American agouti with an average maximal age of 10 years
- Ord’s kangaroo rat with an average maximal age of 9.75 years
- Greater musky fruit bat with an average maximal age of 8 years
- African clawless otter with an average maximal age of 11 years
- California leaf-nosed bat with an average maximal age of 10.33 years