Elephant Shrews Have Been Found In Africa After Decades Of Bein…

Did you know that there’s a creature that’s small, fluffy and adorable like a hamster but has a trunk-like nose like an elephant? No, we’re not kidding you or describing a character from a whimsical children’s storybook. There’s really a creature like this scurrying around in the world. Say hello to the Somali Elephant shrews! Now, you may be scowling a little, because this is the first time you’ve ever heard of them. That’s because nobody has seen them for fifty years. That is, until now.

Almost immediately after their ‘disappearance’, GWC placed them on their “25 Most Wanted Lost Species” list. Before their disappearance, only 39 individual sengi had been known to science centuries ago. Now those 39 sengi are stored at museums. And because there was little to no information collected about them in the past, most people didn’t know that such an extraordinary creature existed. In fact, they were among the world’s least known species! For half a century, the sengi species was considered one of African mammalogy’s biggest mysteries.

Originally, Somali Sengi or Somali Elephant shrews could only be found in Somalia, hence the name. Then in 2019, GWC learned that the elusive creature was spotted in Djibouti. GWC immediately put together a team of scientists to find the sengi. Aside from Steven Heritage, the team also had legendary sengi researcher, the late Galen Rathbun from the California Academy of Sciences. Houssein Rayaleh, a research ecologist and conservationist from Association Djibouti Nature, who had seen the mammal before also joined the team. They started their search by interviewing and showing pictures of the sengi to local Djiboutians. Following this, they also conducted a scat analysis to figure out what the creatures ate.