The diurnal dassie-rat, Petromus typicus, occurs in the mountainous areas along the eastern side of the Namib Desert, as well as and on inselbergs in the Namib with an annual mean rainfall >25 mm. Its distribution is limited by the presence of either moist woodlands or to areas with cold, wet winters. The gestation period is taken as three months, based on the precocial condition of the young at birth. A maximum of three young per litter was recorded, with two being the mode. The young start taking solid food at 14 days and wean at about three weeks, then attaining adulthood at about nine months (at a mass of ca. 150 g). The two main breeding seasons could be related to the onset of the rainy season, although it cannot be ruled out that breeding in endogenous.
Twinning has been reported to be much rarer in sea turtles than in freshwater turtles. However, data from sea turtles were inferred from unhatched eggs only. We hypothesized that the difference in twinning events among turtle taxa resulted primarily from the methods used for recording data. In this study, data have been recorded from 727 clutches of eggs of loggerhead sea turtles Caretta caretta laid between 2002 and 2009 at the Pelagie Islands, Italy (n = 36 clutches) and at Dalaman Beach, Turkey (n = 691 clutches). Twin embryos were found in seven out of 12160 unhatched eggs (twinning rate per unhatched egg: 0.058), but not a single case of hatched or emerged twins was recorded in 3571 eggs. The twinning rate recorded, based on post-hoc procedures, did not underestimate the occurrence of the phenomenon: the odds of obtaining a pair of twins in unhatched eggs were as large (0.92 times) as the odds of obtaining a pair of twins in the total eggs. Compared with other loggerhead nesting sites, and other sea turtle species, no statistical differences were found. However, twinning in C. caretta was found to be 6.9 times rarer than in freshwater turtle species.