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What Do Dustys Look Like Real Life the Snake Animal

Strange and Unbelievable Facts Near Shrews

March 5, 2022

Young shrews (crocidura, most likely c. russula) near their nest. Picture taken at a compost heap in Germany. Photo © Holger Casselmann / Wikimedia Commons

Y'all're walking along some bushes in a park, and of a sudden see a tiny greyness beast skittering into the fallen leaves. At kickoff you might think it's a rodent, but this corybantic brawl of free energy is actually a shrew.

While it may announced small and grayness, shrews are ane of the virtually voracious mammalian predators on the planet. And they're arable and widespread, found on 5 continents in a variety of habitats. In the United Kingdom, there are an estimated fifty shrews per hectare in woodlands, with a country-wide population of more than 40 1000000 shrews. The northern short-tailed shrew may be the about common mammal of the eastern United States.

Soricidae, the shrew family, contains more than 385 species. Superficially, many of these species look like, with most having pointy snouts, a streamlined body and a grayish coloration. Merely they exhibit a variety of behaviors. Even though they're common and widespread, few people meet them and fewer know their crazy habits and adaptations.

Allow'due south take a look at just some of the many reasons to marvel at shrews.

Life in the Fast Lane

If you're lucky plenty to encounter a shrew, you'll notice that information technology'due south moving rapidly, with rapid, hasty movements. This isn't considering you lot scared it; shrews just live life fast and furious. Your most highly caffeinated, Blazon A colleague volition announced downright slothful compared to a shrew.

While this varies among species, a shrew's eye rate beats 800 to 1000 times per infinitesimal. The Etruscan shrew, the smallest terrestrial mammal on earth, has a heart rate that tin reach 1500 beats per minute, more whatsoever other mammal and more even than the hummingbird.

Shrews have been recorded making 12 trunk movements per second . (Go alee and attempt to duplicate this feat). They're in constant motion, rarely stopping to sleep. They have a high metabolism, which means they accept to swallow. A lot.

A shrew's life is a constant search for prey. Many species must eat their body weight'southward worth of nutrient each day. (I advise you not to attempt this 1). If a shrew doesn't eat inside a few hours, it dies. This constant need for nutrient has led to some truly bizarre and fifty-fifty disturbing adaptations.
Spotter Those Whiskers

Northern Short-tailed Shrew. Photo © Gilles Gonthier / Flickr

Shrews must observe and subdue casualty fast. They have poor eyesight and often live in thick cover filled with obstacles. How do they manage?

Many sources mention that some shrews use echolocation: they emit sounds producing sonar that helps them navigate their world (much like bats). Shrews emit a sound described as a "twitter" and information technology is often causeless this is used in repeat-location. Nevertheless, much of the evidence appears anecdotal. An article in the journal Biology Messages found "shrew-like calls tin indeed yield echo scenes useful for habitat assessment at close range."

There isn't evidence that this echolocation is used to find casualty. Instead, shrews rely on their long, highly sensitive whiskers, besides known as vibrissae. According to a written report published in Philosophical Transactions B, the Etruscan shrew hunts in an surround where crickets are particularly abundant. It moves its whiskers constantly – a motion called, appropriately enough, whisking – until it brushes its casualty. And then information technology strikes quickly and with great precision.

Of course, wasting time attacking non-casualty items that the whiskers brush confronting would burn down precious energy. The researchers conducted an intriguing test:

"Experiments with dummy prey objects showed that shrews attacked a plastic replica of a cricket but not other plastic objects of similar size. Altering the shape of crickets by gluing on additional body parts from donor animals revealed that the jumping legs but non the head are cardinal features in prey recognition."
Shrew Venom, A Horror Story

You can spend way too much fourth dimension on YouTube watching videos of shrews attacking mice, scorpions, snakes and other larger creatures. Spoiler alert: the shrew wins.

This is considering many shrew species are venomous. Enquiry has found that an individual shrew stores enough venom to kill 200 mice. Some shrews as well use this venom for something called live hoarding.

Live hoarding sounds innocuous plenty, just in reality information technology shares numerous plot points with that terrifying film Hostel. Here's how it works.

The shrew lacks hollow fangs (as in venomous snakes) but instead has a gland that allows saliva to flow with the venom. When the shrew encounters its prey – frequently an invertebrate, but it tin also be a mouse or other vertebrate – it begins bitter it, allowing the venomous saliva to flow into the wound.

For the prey, this is the beginning of a very bad day. The venom paralyzes the creature, only keeps it very much alive. The shrew tin can and then move it to a cache, available for whenever hunting is not going so bully. For an beast that has to eat constantly, this keeps a fresh if unsavory meal always at the ready.

The American Chemical Society reports that a mealworm can be kept, paralyzed but alive, for xv days.

Shrew bites on humans are reportedly painful but fade in a few days. Exist very, very glad these animals are not larger.
Following the Herd

Mormon crickets in Nevada, 2006. Photograph © katie madonia / Wikimedia Commons through a CC BY 2.five license

In the sagebrush country of the western United States, 1 species of shrews may follow the thundering herds … of Mormon crickets. Mormon crickets (actually a species of katydid) are prone to periodically accept population explosions resulting in big swarms.

Vladimir Dinets, in the Peterson Field Guide to Finding Mammals , includes this intriguing description: "On arid plains these shrews follow swarms of Mormon crickets the same way Gray Wolves follow migrating Caribou herds. If you encounter a swarm, wait for shrews scurrying along its tail edge."

Dinets' book, by the way, is like a shrew lookout man's bible, including tips on where and how to seek all the North American species.
Walking on Water

H2o shrew on Pebble Creek. © NPS/April Henderson / Flickr

You tin find a shrew species in just almost any habitat. Several species of water shrews even take to streams. The water shrew has stiff hairs on its feet that permit it to scamper across the surface of the water. Its stiff fur likewise traps air bubbles, assuasive it to stay underwater for short bursts. It must stay in abiding move underwater, or it pops back upwardly to the surface. It hunts caddis larvae and other pocket-sized aquatic prey.

Theodore Roosevelt (yes, the president) observed a water shrew catching a minnow in Northward Idaho. He described it in his book The Wilderness Hunter: "It was less in size than a mouse, and as it paddled speedily underneath the water its body seemed flattened like a disk, and was spangled by tiny bubbling, like flecks of silver."

As a side notation, Theodore Roosevelt as well kept a shrew in captivity (he fed it a mouse and garter ophidian) and observed, wrote most and collected shrew species on his lengthy African safari. He even has a shrew species named after him. I'one thousand not surprised that he had a beloved of shrews, given his accomplishments as a conservationist, naturalist and outdoors enthusiast. I wish for another politician like him virtually every day.
The Incredible Shrinking Brain

Common shrew (Sorex araneus). Photo © Dr Mary Gillham Archive Project / Flickr through a CC By 2.0 license

Many wildlife species feast and bulk upwardly for the cold winter months. With the shrew'due south metabolism, weight proceeds is not an option. And then at least one shrew species shrinks. A recent written report, published in the journal Nature , found that in common shrews in Deutschland, "Their spines also got shorter, and major organs, including the heart, lungs and spleen, shrank. Even their encephalon mass dropped by xx–thirty%."

Researcher Javier Lazaro hypothesized that "reducing their body mass during winter might increase their chances of survival, because they wouldn't need and so much food." The encephalon in particular has high free energy requirements, simply the study could not determine if shrews experienced decreased cerebral functions.
Foxes Hate Them, Trout Love Them

The shrew-eating trout of Togiak National Wild animals Refuge. Photo: U.S. Fish and Wild animals Service.

Shrews may be fierce predators, but they're small-scale, which means they in turn go prey. Many mammalian predators, including red foxes, raccoons and cats, volition attack them but rarely actually eat them. That's because shrews emit an unpleasant musk that some liken to the smell of skunk.

This does not deter other predators, similar owls and snakes. Just my favorite incidence of shrew predation is a rainbow trout caught at Alaska's Togiak National Wild animals Refuge that had nineteen shrews in its stomach. These were not water shrews, simply other species that roughshod into the h2o and became prey. You tin read the full business relationship in my previous blog.
Shakespeare and Shrews

Petruchio (Kevin Black) and Katherina (Emily Jordan) from the 2003 Carmel Shakespeare Festival production at the Forest Theater. Photo © Smatprt / Wikimedia Commons through a CC BY-SA 3.0 license

And then there's the literary work, Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. During my Shakespearean literature grade in higher, my professor stated that the Bard did not refer to the literal shrew, as such a beneficial, inconsequential mammal wouldn't fit the theme of the play.

Equally a lifelong mammal nerd, this amounted to heresy. I decided to make my last paper for the class a detailed comparison of the real shrew with the literary one. This, in hindsight, was a bit of a risk. I relied on a store of shrew facts, many of which now announced in this web log.

As I read my professor's comments on the paper, I could sense that she was initially annoyed at my topic, and then became increasingly alarmed as she realized I was quite serious. The paper received an "A", along with the pointed suggestion that I pursue a career in nature writing as opposed to academia.

And here I am, notwithstanding sharing shrew facts.