Elephant shrews, also called jumping shrews or sengis, are small insectivorous mammals native to Africa, belonging to the family Macroscelididae, in the order Macroscelidea. Their traditional common English name "elephant shrew" comes from a perceived resemblance between their long noses and the trunk of an elephant, and their superficial similarity with shrews in the order Eulipotyphla. However, phylogenetic analysis revealed that elephant shrews are not classified with true shrews, but are in fact more closely related to elephants than shrews. In 1997, the biologist Jonathan Kingdon proposed that they instead be called "sengis", a term derived from the Bantu languages of Africa, and in 1998, they were classified into the new clade Afrotheria.
The hero shrew, also known as the armored shrew, is a large shrew native to the Congo Basin of Africa. Its features are typical of a white-toothed shrew − short legs, slender snout, dense fur − except for a highly unusual spinal column. It has corrugated interlocking vertebrae that are unique among mammals except for its sister species, Thor's hero shrew. This unique adaptation allows the animal to bear a huge amount of weight on its back − 72 kg (159 lb) according to an expedition team.
The black and rufous elephant shrew, the black and rufous sengi, or the Zanj elephant shrew is one of the 17 species of elephant shrew found only in Africa. Like other members of the genus Rhynchocyon, it is a relatively large species, with adults averaging about 28 cm (11 in) in length and 450-700 g (1.0-1.5 lb) in weight. It is native to the lowland montane and dense forests of Kenya and Tanzania. It eats insects such as beetles, termites, and centipedes, using its proboscis to dig them from the soil and its tongue to lick them up. It typically builds ground level nests for shelter requiring dry leaf litter often at the base of trees. Like most elephant shrews, it lives in monogamous pairs, defending hectare-sized territories.
Hylomyscus is a genus of rodent in the family Muridae endemic to Africa.
Myosorex is a mammal genus in the Soricidae (shrew) family. The genus, collectively referred to as the mouse shrews, contains these species:
Surdisorex is a genus of mammals in the family Soricidae. Surdisorex is one of three genera of African shrews, which, in turn, are one of three living subfamilies of shrews. Species in the genus Surdisorex are called African mole shrews because of their similarity to moles, to which they are not closely related.
The Taita shrew is an extant species of white-toothed shrew from two localities in the Taita Hills mountain range in the Taita-Taveta District of southwestern Kenya. Given the continuing decline in the quality of this habitat, and the limitations in its range, the IUCN recognises the shrew as an endangered species.
Thor's hero shrew is an extant species of shrew native to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It and its sister species, the hero shrew, are the only mammal species known to have interlocking vertebrae.
William T. "Bill" Stanley was an American mammalogist who was a manager of the collections at one of the world's largest natural history museums and a student of the mammals of eastern Africa. He was an evolutionary biologist and mammalogist, and at the time of his death was the Director of the Field Museum of Natural History's Collections Center and the Collection Manager of the Field Museum's Collection of Mammals. Stanley studied the biogeography, ecology, evolution, and systematics of shrews, bats and rodents that live on mountains within Tanzania and surrounding countries.
