Science Today: New Mammal Discovery: Etendeka Round-Eared Sengi | California Academy of Sciences

Meet macroscelides micus,
or the Etendaka round-eared sengi.

It's a mouthful.

Sengis, or elephant shrews,

are very unusual mammals
found only in Africa.

The early biologists
who discovered them and described them,

they tried to lump them in with shrews,
but they were unusual for shrews

because they had a long proboscis —
their nose was long,

not quite like an elephants trunk,
but it can move them around

and the nostrils are at the end
like an elephant's trunk

and so they called them elephant shrews.

It turns out that they're
genetically more closely related

to elephants and aardvarks and dugongs

than they are to the other shrews.

This news species was discovered
and described recently

by academy scientists
and their colleagues.

They found the specimen in Namibia,
where other sengis live,

but with its red hair, it looked
a little different from the rest.

It was unclear at the time
whether that was

just a red-haired individual
or whether it was

actually genetically very distinct
from the others.

So it took quite a bit of work,
looking at the skull,

looking at the skins,
and then some genetic work

before we realized that it
actually was very distinct.

Then once we knew that we had
something new and different

from all the others,
we actually went back to the field

so that we could learn
a little bit more about them.

Their fieldwork confirmed it, and the team
recently published their results.

It turns out that it's the smallest
of all of the elephant shrews,

so it's the smallest member of its order.

In addition to being smaller,
it has a very large gland

on the tail, which it
probably uses for scent marking.

This particular species tends to live
in areas that are very remote

and extremely dry, so they
probably need a huge home range.

That's how they might tell
other individuals where they are.

Even their mate might be hard to find
on such a large home range

without something like that.

To learn more about these critters,
Jack and Glen Rathbun

will return to the field this fall.

We want to go back to Namibia this fall
to try and understand its home range,

whether they're monogamous
like some of the other groups,

what they feed on, when they're active —
during the night or day —

probably mostly during the night —

we're going to be radio-collaring
these teeny, tiny mouse-like critters

and following them around
in the desert with radios.

But for now, these new small mammals
are making news.

We tend to think that we know
the mammal fauna of the world

fairly well, and so when you
do discover a new mammal,

it's a pretty special thing.

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