For many years elephant shrews, represented here by the rock elephant shrew, were placed wifhin the Order Insectivora. Today they are separated from that group by virtue of their long snouts, heibivotous dentition and different digestive tract.

The recognition of elephant shrews as a distinct clade of eutherian mammals and the discovery of their earliest representatives has not simplified the problem of their higher-order affinities.

Like treeshrews, elephant shrews are active for half of the twenty-four-hour day, implying that this type of general invertebrate gleaning requires long foraging times in both families. Certain elephant shrews are nearly entirely insectivorous (95-100%; Rathbun 1979), and they are cursorial, not scansorial, so they are in some ecological aspects quite unlike treeshrews.

Elephant shrew

Meaning

Noun

Synonyms