The stomach has three types of contractions: There are rhythmic, 3 per minute, synchronized contractions in the lower part of the stomach, which create waves of food particles and juice which splash against a closed sphincter muscle (the pyloric sphincter) to grind the food into small particles.
7 What is the gestation period, how many babies do they have, and when are they weaned? 1  The gestation period for rats is 19â22 days, for mice it is 17â21 days.  Rats and mice average 8â12 babies in a litter, but can have as few as 1 or as many as 20.
4 A female rat can mate as many as 500 times with various males during a six-hour period of receptivityâa state she experiences about 15 times per year. Thus a pair of brown rats can produce as many as 2,000 descendants in a year if left to breed unchecked. (A rat matures sexually at age three to four months.) An average rat's life span is two to three years. 5 A rat can tread water for three days and survive being flushed down the toilet. (And it can return to the building via the same route.) There is approximately one rat per person in the United States.