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www.thevillagenews.co.za
17 June 2020
MY ENVIRONMENT
When is a shrew not a shrew (or an elephant)? By Anina Lee
little creature! To prevent further conflict, I gently captured the mousey critter and offered it a home for the night to recover from its ordeal. So now the question was what to feed it while boarding with me.
M
y weekly article in The Village NEWS is a pleasure to write. To start with, I generally know very little about most topics – just enough to think it may be interesting. To quote my favourite physicist, Richard Feynman, “it’s the pleasure of finding things out”. So I start casting around tor anything that catches my attention. But this time, I did not need to look for inspiration – it came looking for me. Anyone who has had toddlers knows that if things are too quiet, it usually means trouble. Something similar holds true for cats. If they stare fixedly, apparently at nothing, you can be sure it’s something. This was exactly what caught my eye. On inspection, the cats had cornered a tiny little mouse-like animal with a very long nose. I recognised it as a Sengi, more commonly known as an elephant shrew. It was facing off the cats by standing up on its rather long hind legs, mouth open, nose pulled back, showing its sharp little teeth. And it was emitting extremely high-pitched squeaks – so high pitched that my aged ears could not hear them at first. What a feisty
I had previously read that elephant shrews were insectivorous. But where to find insects when you need them?So I consulted with Dr Google on what kind of Sengi it was and what else it might eat. Dr Google informed me that the only elephant shrew found in the Western Cape is the Cape Rock Elephant Shrew (Elephantulus edwardii) and that it might also eat worms. Great, I have a whole bin full of red wiggler earthworms. Supper sorted, I had a closer look at the little creature and could compare it with photographs, courtesy of Google, of the Cape Rock Elephant Shrew. To my surprise my critter did not look much like the photographs.
tified the little girl (yes, I looked) as a Karoo Round‐eared Elephant Shrew (Macroscelides proboscideus) from the desert and semi-desert regions of south-western South Africa.
PHOTO: Chester Zoo
Further reading informed me that the adults of this species weigh in at only 40 – 50 grams and that they are omnivores, eating both insects and vegetation. The females have six mammae (I didn’t look) and that despite this, the litters are small. Despite the name, Elephant Shrews are neither elephants nor shrews. Although they look a lot like longnosed mice, they are not even closely related to rodents. Their closest relatives are actually golden moles and aardvarks and yes, even elephants – like dassies. So what was a Round-eared Elephant Shrew doing in my garden on the fringe of Fernkloof Nature Reserve? It’s hardly an arid habitat – yet. But it must have come from the nature reserve.
It was dark grey with a paler belly, not light grey with ruddy tinge around the ears; it had rather small round ears, compared to the more prominent ears in the photographs; the eyes were small and beady, rather than large with a white ring around the eyes.
By chance a neighbour mentioned that a little shrew-like animal just like that had given birth to a litter in his garage some months ago. The family had been safely relocated into the reserve. And that’s exactly what I did with my little visitor.
So definitely not a Cape Rock Elephant Shrew. But what? If in doubt, you can always ask Dr Vic Hamilton-Attwell. If he doesn’t know offhand, he will know where to find the information. And so it was. He iden-
In the next couple of days, another two Sengis had to be relocated. So there is probably an unrecorded population of Round-eared Elephant Shrews living in Fernkloof. How exciting is that!
The Karoo Roundeared Elephant Shrew (Macroscelides proboscideus) is neither an elephant nor a shrew. Although they look a lot like long-nosed mice, they are not even closely related to rodents.
The Cape Rock Elephant Shrew (Elephantulus edwardii) is a lighter grey, has more prominent ears and larger, white-ringed eyes. PHOTO: Reddit
PHOTO: BioLib
The Karoo Roundeared Elephant Shrew is found in the desert and semi-desert regions of southwestern South Africa. It would appear that an unrecorded population is also living in Fernkloof Nature Reserve.
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