Species Spotlight: Golden-rumped Elephant Shrew
Species spotlight:
A Shrew sized Elephant? An Elephant shaped Shrew? Or actually… neither? Learn all about the confusing contradictions of the Elephant Shrew!
Names & Nicknames: Golden-rumped shrew or Golden-rumped Sengi
Size: HUGE… well, for an Elephant shrew at least. The golden-rumped is one of the largest Elephant shrew species at a whopping 550 grams, measuring up to the length of a standard ruler, and that's without the tail!
Smell: Sweet, sweet musk, baby! These shrews have a pungent, particular smell to help ward off the many things that want to eat them.
Communication: Elephant shrews have a pretty neat way to communicate. Ever the considerate friend, if startled by a predator (or human), they'll slap their tails against the ground to alert other elephant shrews.
Favourite hangout: Curled up asleep in their little nests. Elephant shrews excavate a hole in the soil that they line with leaves to be their bed for the night. This construction can take up to two hours, and it's hard to say which is their favourite, as golden-rumped can have up to 6 on the go at a time that they alternate between to throw off predators!
Fav Food: Not too fussy as long as they don’t have a backbone. These little critters spend their days running around the undergrowth (with impressive speed), using their long snouts to hoover up any invertebrate they can sink their teeth into.
Love Language: These little love shrews mate for life. They'll jointly defend a territory together, though they seldom spend time with each other. The male knows to keep in line; female elephant shrews tend to be the dominant ones!
If you see them?: Good luck with that! Elephant shrews are well camouflaged and clock in at speeds of up to 16mph (24km/h), as fast as a rampaging herd of bulls. (Just a little less frightening.)
Red flags: Although they can sometimes get caught up in hunters' traps, they aren't explicitly hunted by humans, mainly because they're meant to taste... unfavourable. Habitat loss is a major threat, though.
Facts: Elephant shrews have a bit of an identity crisis, are they elephants, or are they shrews??? Well, it turns out that, despite their size, they are more closely related to elephants than shrews! Though they aren't that closely related to either elephants or shrews at all….
Facts: Elephant shrews get periods just like humans. They are in the exclusive club of mammals to have this, including primates such as humans and a small number of bat species.
Who are they in the friendship group: The small, overly caffeinated friend. The real world scares them, but that doesn't mean they aren’t prepared to fight when threatened.
Name:
Golden-rumped Elephant Shrew
Habitat:
Found in dense coastal scrub and semi-deciduous forests of East Africa
Diet:
Insectivores that eat invertebrates such as earthworms, millipedes, insects and spiders
Size:
525-550g in weight and 27-29cm in length plus another 23-26cm for the tail
Behaviour:
Diurnal - most active in the mornings
Predators:
A variety of natural predators including snakes and birds of prey
Lifespan:
4-5 years
Threats:
Habitat loss and being caught in traps
Conservation status:
Endangered
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