What is the maximal age a Plains pocket gopher reaches?
An adult Plains pocket gopher (Geomys bursarius) usually gets as old as 7.17 years.
Plains pocket gophers are around 20 days in the womb of their mother. When born, they weight 5 grams (0.01 lbs) and measure 14.6 cm (0′ 6″). As a member of the Geomyidae family (genus: Geomys), a Plains pocket gopher caries out around 3 little ones per pregnancy, which happens around 1 times a year. Fully grown, they reach a bodylength of 16.8 cm (0′ 7″).
As a reference: Usually, humans get as old as 100 years, with the average being around 75 years. After being carried in the belly of their mother for 280 days (40 weeks), they grow to an average size of 1.65m (5′ 5″) and weight in at 62 kg (137 lbs), which is obviously highly individual.
The plains pocket gopher (Geomys bursarius) is one of 35 species of pocket gophers, so named in reference to their externally located, fur-lined cheek pouches. They are burrowing animals, found in grasslands and agricultural land across the Great Plains of North America, from Manitoba to Texas. Pocket gophers are the most highly fossorial rodents found in North America.
Animals of the same family as a Plains pocket gopher
Not really brothers and sisters, but from the same biological family (Geomyidae):
- Alcorn’s pocket gopher bringing the scale to 150 grams
- Desert pocket gopher with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Smoky pocket gopher with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Camas pocket gopher with 4 babies per pregnancy
- Hispid pocket gopher with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Yellow-faced pocket gopher becoming 4.67 years old
- Central Texas pocket gopher bringing the scale to 599 grams
- Big pocket gopher bringing the scale to 499 grams
- Smoky pocket gopher bringing the scale to 150 grams
- Merriam’s pocket gopher with 1 babies per pregnancy
Animals that reach the same age as Plains pocket gopher
With an average age of 7.17 years, Plains pocket gopher are in good companionship of the following animals:
- Canyon bat usually reaching 6 years
- Serotine bat usually reaching 6 years
- Collared pika usually reaching 6 years
- Eastern quoll usually reaching 6.75 years
- Gray short-tailed opossum usually reaching 6 years
- Mexican mouse opossum usually reaching 7 years
- Scaly-tailed possum usually reaching 6 years
- Black-tailed jackrabbit usually reaching 6.75 years
- Bare-tailed woolly opossum usually reaching 6.33 years
- Red-tailed chipmunk usually reaching 8 years
Animals with the same number of babies Plains pocket gopher
The same number of babies at once (3) are born by:
- Balochistan gerbil
- Bower’s white-toothed rat
- Black-footed ferret
- Kashmir flying squirrel
- Wagner’s gerbil
- Derby’s woolly opossum
- Whitehead’s spiny rat
- Small Indian civet
- Elias’s Atlantic spiny rat
- Hooper’s mouse
Weighting as much as Plains pocket gopher
A fully grown Plains pocket gopher reaches around 179 grams (0.39 lbs). So do these animals:
- Red spiny rat with 150 grams
- Chestnut-bellied spiny rat with 159 grams
- Lesser stick-nest rat with 150 grams
- Cameroon scaly-tail with 200 grams
- Arizona woodrat with 200 grams
- Dusky rat with 146 grams
- Pale field rat with 169 grams
- American pika with 158 grams
- Lorentz’s mosaic-tailed rat with 150 grams
- Large treeshrew with 182 grams
Animals as big as a Plains pocket gopher
Those animals grow as big as a Plains pocket gopher:
- Daurian pika with 18 cm (0′ 8″)
- Earless water rat with 19.3 cm (0′ 8″)
- Smoky pocket gopher with 19.2 cm (0′ 8″)
- Perote ground squirrel with 17.9 cm (0′ 8″)
- Isarog shrew-rat with 18.7 cm (0′ 8″)
- Harris’s antelope squirrel with 16 cm (0′ 7″)
- Sierra Madre ground squirrel with 17.2 cm (0′ 7″)
- Woolly mouse opossum with 16.8 cm (0′ 7″)
- Short-footed Luzon tree rat with 20 cm (0′ 8″)
- Gray mouse lemur with 14 cm (0′ 6″)