10 Baby Animals That Can Almost Fit on Your Fingertip
The first one on our list is the kitti’s hog-nosed bat. It is known to be the smallest bat in the world considered it is only one inch long and weighs around 0.7 oz which is about the weight of two coffee beans. This bat is not only the smallest one of its species but also one of the smallest mammals on the planet. Because of their size and adorable and innocent look, uncommon for a bat, they earned a nickname “bumblebee bat”, nickname a certain superhero wouldn’t be too proud of. They mate at spring and a female has one offspring at most. Can you imagine a bat that can fit on the tip of your finger having an even smaller baby? That’s right, these babies are incredibly tiny and a definition of cuteness. They stay attached to the mother’s waist for a few months before they are capable of flying on their own.
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Next one on our list is the famous kangaroo. Kangaroos are certainly better known than the hog-nosed bats but most people don’t really know anything about them than the fact that they are great jumpers and skilled boxers in cartoons. One of the fascinating things about kangaroos is the way they are born. As you are probably aware, kangaroos are in fact quite big animals, usually taller than most men with their average height of 7 ft when standing up and weight over 190-200 lb. The thing that will blow your mind is their size at birth. When a kangaroo is born it’s, believe it or not, the size of a grain of rice. Bigger kangaroo joey can be the size of a bee but that is a rare case, and as big as they can get. If all of this is too mind-boggling for you there is a good explanation why an animal bigger than a human would have an offspring smaller than our fingernail. Kangaroos gestation period last only about 21 to 39 days after which a joey is born, but it will spend another 120 to 450 days in a mothers pouch until it is ready to meet the world.
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Next we have a honey possum. This possum is proven to be the smallest marsupial on Earth. Its appearance is similar to the regular possum but it is much smaller. They are only about 3 in long and their average weight is around 0.25 oz, all in all they are about half the size of a regular mouse. They can mate any time of the year, and their offspring is a smallest baby mammal in the world considered its weight is only 0.0001 oz. It will stay in its mother’s pouch around 60 days until they mature enough.
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Pygmy seahorse is even smaller than a regular seahorse which is still very tiny. They are only about one fourth of an inch long. Just like regular male seahorses, pygmy seahorse males are the ones that are giving birth. They keep the eggs in their pouch for three to four weeks until they give birth to little seahorses. They can keep around a hundred eggs at a time so there is no parenting once seahorses are born, instead they are left on their own. Interesting fact is that these adorable little sea creatures actually end up living longer than regular seahorses, simply because they are naturally gifted at camouflage.
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Pygmy mouse lemurs are arguably one of the smallest primates in the world. They only grow to be around 4 in long, so the fact that their babies are tiny enough to fit on the tip of your finger isn’t really shocking.
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Pygmy marmoset is well known for the fact that it is a smallest monkey there is. They can’t grow to be heavier than 3.5 oz. They may be not as strong as a gorilla, but their power lies in their unreal cuteness. Maybe the only thing cutter than these tiny monkeys are their even smaller babies, which weigh only 0.5 oz at birth.
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Etruscan shrew is competing for the spot of the smallest mammal in the world with the hog-nosed bat and the honey possum that we mentioned at the beginning of this article. They weigh about 0.6 oz which is only 0.1 oz lighter than the hog-nosed bat, making it pretty difficult to decide which one is the smallest, but enough to leave the honey possum far behind in this race. Gestation period lasts about a month and there are usually 2 to 4 newborns that aren’t heavier than 0.007 oz.
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Next we have our only bird on this list, and it is the bee hummingbird. This species is known as the smallest bird in the world, but we would also add the title of the cutest bird in the world. They aren’t heavier than a penny and are very similar to the bumblebee bee bat in size, even their nicknames suggests that. They lay eggs that babies hatch from, and once they are out on the surface, they are about the size of a single coffee bean.
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We also decided to add a second smallest frog in the world to this list. If you guessed we were talking about Brazilian golden frog, congratulations, you were right. This frog might not be as cute as some of the animals we mentioned in this article, but it has a well earned place on our list since its babies, when hatched from eggs, are so small that their weight is actually unknown.
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And last but not least we have the Paedocypris carp. This fish is only 0.3 in long and it is perhaps the smallest fish amongst them all. Even though that fact is arguable, we do know for sure that it has the smallest babies of all fish breeds. Just like the Brazilian golden frogs babies, their weight at birth is immeasurable.
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Image sources:
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