How big does a Malagasy giant rat get? Here is an overview over the average adult age:
A grown Malagasy giant rat (Hypogeomys antimena) reaches an average size of 30.6 cm (1′ 1″).
When born, they have an average size of 0 cm (0′ 0″). A full-grown exemplary reaches roughly 1.18 kg (2.6 lbs). A Malagasy giant rat has 1 babies at once. The Malagasy giant rat (genus: Hypogeomys) is a member of the family Muridae.
As a reference: Humans reach an average body size of 1.65m (5′ 5″) while carrying 62 kg (137 lbs). A human woman is pregnant for 280 days (40 weeks) and on average become 75 years old.
The Malagasy giant rat (Hypogeomys antimena), also known as the votsotsa or votsovotsa, is a nesomyid rodent found only in the Menabe region of Madagascar. It is an endangered species due to habitat loss, slow reproduction, and limited range (200 square kilometres north of Morondava, between the rivers Tomitsy and Tsiribihina) Pairs are monogamous and females bear only one or two young per year. It is the only extant species in the genus Hypogeomys; another species, Hypogeomys australis, is known from subfossil remains a few thousand years old.
Animals of the same family as a Malagasy giant rat
We found other animals of the Muridae family:
- Brants’s whistling rat with 2 babies per litter
- Balochistan gerbil with a size of 6.3 cm (0′ 3″)
- Glacier rat with a size of 12.8 cm (0′ 6″)
- Fringe-tailed gerbil with 5 babies per litter
- Yellow steppe lemming with 7 babies per litter
- Southern grasshopper mouse with a size of 9.4 cm (0′ 4″)
- Greater Wilfred’s mouse with a weight of 46 grams
- Northern bog lemming with 4 babies per litter
- Burrowing chinchilla mouse with a weight of 83 grams
- Northern hopping mouse with a size of 10.3 cm (0′ 5″)
Animals with the same size as a Malagasy giant rat
Not that size really matters, but it makes things comparable. So here are a couple of animals that are as big as Malagasy giant rat:
- Masoala fork-marked lemur with a size of 26.1 cm (0′ 11″)
- Gray four-eyed opossum with a size of 26.5 cm (0′ 11″)
- Bulmer’s fruit bat with a size of 24.5 cm (0′ 10″)
- Moonrat with a size of 32.7 cm (1′ 1″)
- Ring-tailed cat with a size of 33.9 cm (1′ 2″)
- Common degu with a size of 28 cm (1′ 0″)
- Striped possum with a size of 25.5 cm (0′ 11″)
- Black flying fox with a size of 25.4 cm (0′ 10″)
- Long-tailed chinchilla with a size of 30.5 cm (1′ 1″)
- Peters’s squirrel with a size of 26.8 cm (0′ 11″)
Animals with the same litter size as a Malagasy giant rat
Here is a list of animals that have the same number of babies per litter (1) as a Malagasy giant rat:
- Asinus
- Smoky pocket gopher
- Guianan squirrel monkey
- Spotted seal
- Thomson’s gazelle
- Large-footed bat
- Seba’s short-tailed bat
- Bioko Allen’s bushbaby
- Wahlberg’s epauletted fruit bat
- Peters’s trumpet-eared bat
Animals with the same weight as a Malagasy giant rat
As a comparison, here are some other animals that weight as much as the Hypogeomys antimena:
- Fennec fox with a weight of 1.32 kilos (2.91 lbs)
- Emin’s pouched rat with a weight of 1.28 kilos (2.82 lbs)
- Northern bettong with a weight of 1.26 kilos (2.78 lbs)
- Gambian pouched rat with a weight of 1.27 kilos (2.8 lbs)
- Tapeti bringing 988 grams to the scale
- Tufted ground squirrel with a weight of 1.35 kilos (2.98 lbs)
- Clara’s echymipera with a weight of 1.2 kilos (2.65 lbs)
- Hispaniolan hutia with a weight of 1.27 kilos (2.8 lbs)
- Nasuella olivacea with a weight of 1.34 kilos (2.95 lbs)
- Blanford’s fox bringing 994 grams to the scale