#eulipotyphla

Masked Shrew Sorex cinereus

A common shrew found in Alaska, Canada, and the northern United States. They eat insects, worms, snails, small rodents, salamanders, and seeds. Due to its high metabolism, the masked shrew can eat three times its weight a day. The shrew has to eat almost constantly, because they can only survive a few hours without food Their metabolism drops when they are at rest.

Звери самые маленькие, 1927. Illustrated by Vasily Vatagin.

Common Shrew (Sorex araneus), family Soricidae, order Eulipotyphla, found across central, northern, and eastern Europe, and western Asia

Mildly venomous.

Not yet!!

The hispaniolan solenodon has quite a few claims to fame. For starters, it's venomous, and has grooves in its teeth with which to inject smaller rodents and lizards, just like a snake!. It's long, bare snout is also uniquely flexible; in fact, it's joined to the skull with a ball-and-socket joint to give it more motility. All these traits are the result of being one of the oldest mammals on earth, having more or less settled into its final form over 76 million years ago!

Dinosorex, the "terror shrew", was a genus of eulipotyphlan mammal found across much of Europe for most of the Miocene, ranging from about 23 to 9 million years ago. Part of a family of stem-shrews known as heterosoricids, it was larger than most of its living relatives – probably around 15-20cm long (6-8") – and inhabited subtropical swampy forest environments.

Dinosorex kaelini here was one of the later species in this lineage, living in what is now Switzerland around 12-10.5 million years ago.

It had massive incisor teeth at the front of its jaws and crushing teeth further back, specialized for grabbing, immobilizing, and cracking open prey like hard-shelled invertebrates. Similar to some modern shrews the tips of these teeth were also reinforced with iron in their enamel, which would have given them a striking dark red coloration.

But while Dinosorex was quite abundant and successful during its time, it seems to have had such a specific ecological preference that it couldn't adapt when the climate shifted towards the end of the Miocene. Drier conditions and more open savannas quickly took over, and the terror shrews disappeared along with the lush humid forests they were so dependent on.

———

NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Patreon