#tree shrew

Javan Treeshrew Tupaia hypochrysa

It is endemic to the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Bali, Java and Nias where it inhabits foremost primary forest. It spreads plants seeds and controls insects, and therefore plays a significant role in the ecosystem; it has a special ability to adapt to agroforestry systems.

Madras Tree Shrew or Indian Tree Shrew (Anathana ellioti), family Tupaiidae, order Scandentia, Maharashtra, India

While tree shrews are called shrews and resemble squirrels, they are actually much more closely related to Primates

They are omnivorous generally tree dwelling mammals native to South and Southeast Asia

The Only Mammals Reckless Enough to Eat Hot Peppers Are Humans and Tree Shrews

These little guys would share a bag of Takis with you.

IN THE KUNMING INSTITUTE OF Zoology, in Yunnan, China, there live about 2,000 long-nosed, inquisitive-faced tree shrews. 

Tree shrews make good animal models for studying human diseases: They’re more genetically similar to us than, say, a mouse, but they’re also smaller than most of our closest relatives, the primates. So researchers at the Kunming Institute keep a bunch of them around, in order to learn more about their evolutionary history, physiology, and molecular makeup.

But as these researchers learned recently, even the best models are full of surprises. “[We] were trying to find the favorite food of the tree shrew,” writes Kunming Institute biologist Shilong Yang in an email. As Yang and his colleagues detail in a recent paper in PLOSBiology, they were shocked by the answer: chili peppers.

Chilis are hot because of capsaicinoids, molecules that bind to receptors in our mouths and trick us into thinking we’re experiencing actual pain. In peppers, they likely evolved as a defense against bugs, fungi, and hungry animals...