How many baby Northern nail-tail wallabys are in a litter?
A Northern nail-tail wallaby (Onychogalea unguifera) usually gives birth to around 1 babies.
Upon birth, they weight 22 grams (0.05 lbs) and measure 13.5 cm (0′ 6″). They are a member of the Macropodidae family (genus: Onychogalea). An adult Northern nail-tail wallaby grows up to a size of 52.5 cm (1′ 9″).
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 northern or sandy nail-tail wallaby refers to Onychogalea unguifera, a species of macropod found across northern Australia on arid and sparsely wooded plains.The largest species of the genus Onychogalea, it is a solitary and nocturnal herbivorous browser that selects its food from a wide variety of grasses and succulent plant material. Distinguished by a slender and long-limbed form that resembles the typical and well known kangaroos, although their standing height is shorter, around half of one metre, and their weight is less than nine kilograms. As with some medium to large kangaroo species, such as Macropus rufus, they have an unusual pentapedal motion at slow speeds by stiffening the tail for a fifth limb. When fleeing a disturbance, they hop rapidly with the tail curled back and repeatedly utter the sound “wuluhwuluh”. Their exceptionally long tail has a broad fingernail-like protuberance beneath a dark crest of hair at its end, a peculiarity of the genus that is much broader than the other species. The name unguifera, meaning claw, is a reference to this extraordinary attribute, the purpose of which is unknown.Like the other species of the genus, they retire for the day in a shallow depression, but if disturbed they flee rapidly to find refuge in a hollow tree or thicket. Unlike the rare bridled nailtail O. fraenata, once widespread and currently rare, the northern nail-tail wallaby is not a threatened species. The other member of the genus Onychogalea, the crescent nail-tail O. lunata of the centre and west of Australia, probably became extinct in the mid twentieth century.
Other animals of the family Macropodidae
Northern nail-tail wallaby is a member of the Macropodidae, as are these animals:
- Brown dorcopsis with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Proserpine rock-wallaby with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Lowlands tree-kangaroo with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Ursine tree-kangaroo with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Short-eared rock-wallaby with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Bridled nail-tail wallaby with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Black dorcopsis with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Black wallaroo with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Crescent nail-tail wallaby with 1 babies per pregnancy
- Doria’s tree-kangaroo with 1 babies per pregnancy
Animals that share a litter size with Northern nail-tail wallaby
Those animals also give birth to 1 babies at once:
- Chestnut-bellied titi
- Thumbless bat
- Striped bandicoot
- Grizzled tree-kangaroo
- Koslov’s pika
- Harpy fruit bat
- Père David’s deer
- Dryas monkey
- Antillean fruit-eating bat
- Nathusius’s pipistrelle
Animals with the same weight as a Northern nail-tail wallaby
What other animals weight around 6.5 kg (14.32 lbs)?
- Hoolock gibbon usually reaching 6.7 kgs (14.77 lbs)
- White-cheeked spider monkey usually reaching 6.24 kgs (13.76 lbs)
- Neotropical otter usually reaching 6.55 kgs (14.44 lbs)
- Lar gibbon usually reaching 5.6 kgs (12.35 lbs)
- Black dorcopsis usually reaching 6.2 kgs (13.67 lbs)
- Silvery lutung usually reaching 7.15 kgs (15.76 lbs)
- Crab-eating fox usually reaching 5.74 kgs (12.65 lbs)
- Jaguarundi usually reaching 6.88 kgs (15.17 lbs)
- Peruvian spider monkey usually reaching 7.09 kgs (15.63 lbs)
- Bobcat usually reaching 6.38 kgs (14.07 lbs)