Meet one of the most adorable of all the Living Fossil species, the Elephant shrew, Macroscelides proboscideus, one of 15 species of this order. These small, quadrupedal, insectivorous mammals strongly resemble rodents or opossums with their scaly tails, elongated snouts, and rather longish legs.
They are widely distributed across southern Africa in a variety of habitats, desert, forest, dry rocky outcrops, from the Namib Desert down to South Africa. And they are speedy little things, clocking in at up to 28.8 km / 17.9 mph, making them one of the fastest of our small mammals. These shrews are also shredly cautious, creating and patrolling various escape routes in their foraging territory.
They are considered "Living Fossils" as they have kept their distinctive morphology, not changing all that much in the past 30 million years. Elephant shrews ought to have been named after rabbits. They move through the world like wee baby elephant-bunnies, snuffling and hopping about looking for tasty insect snacks. They also like to dine on spiders, centipedes, millipedes and earthworms. While they are darn hard to spot in the wild, being cautious, fast and diurnal, there is a wee fellow you can visit in the Frankfurt Zoo.
