white-toothed shrew

white-toothed shrew, (genus Crocidura), any of 164 species of mouse-sized African and Eurasian insectivores making up nearly half of the more than 325 species of true shrews (family Soricidae). No other genus of mammals contains as many species. Seven were named during the last decade of the 20th century, and undoubtedly new species await discovery. These shrews have white teeth, a long cylindrical body, short legs, and a long, mobile snout. Their eyes are small, but their ears are large. The finely furred tail ranges from shorter to longer than the body and in some species has long bristly hairs (vibrissae) scattered over its surface.

Among the largest is Olivier’s shrew (C. olivieri) of sub-Saharan Africa, which weighs 37 to 78 grams (1.3 to 2.8 ounces) and has a body 11 to 15 cm (4.3 to 5.9 inches) long and a tail of 8 to 10 cm. One of the smallest is the Sulawesi tiny shrew (C. levicula), which weighs about 4 grams and has a body 6 cm long and a 3- to 4-cm tail. The colour of the short, soft, and velvety fur ranges from gray to dark brown and blackish.

White-toothed shrews inhabit temperate and tropical forests, riverine forests, marshes, temperate steppes and other grasslands, savannas, and semiarid habitats. Active day and night, they are primarily terrestrial, but some tropical species are agile climbers and forage both on and above the ground. They nest in burrows (usually those of other animals), rock crevices, and sometimes tunnels in moss growing on montane forest trees. Their diet mainly consists of insects, other arthropods, and earthworms. Prey is caught with the mouth and manipulated by the flexible proboscis rather than the paws. Litters contain 1 to 10 young, and gestation lasts a month.

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Africa contains the greatest diversity of species (106), and they are distributed throughout the continent except for some Saharan regions. Shrews were important in the religion of ancient Egyptians, and six African species have been found embalmed and mummified in animal tombs along the Nile. Fifty-three species range from Asia Minor eastward to Southeast Asia, excluding tundra, taiga, and harsh deserts. White-toothed shrews also populate the islands of Taiwan, the Philippines, and Sulawesi. C. monticola lives on the Malay Peninsula, as well as on the islands of Borneo, Java, and Bali eastward through the Lesser Sunda Islands to Aru Island on the Australian continental shelf. C. suaveolens is broadly distributed across much of Eurasia and onto some Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Pacific islands. The range of C. leucodon includes Europe and Asia Minor; C. russula occurs in Europe, in northwestern Africa, and on Atlantic and Mediterranean islands. Two species are found only on islands in the Mediterranean Sea.

Crocidura is classified in the subfamily Crocidurinae of the family Soricidae (order Soricomorpha), which belongs to a larger group of mammals referred to as insectivores. The closest living relatives of white-toothed shrews are members of nine genera within the same subfamily. The evolutionary history of Crocidura extends to the middle Miocene Epoch (16 to 11.6 million years ago) in Asia Minor and probably Africa, the early Pliocene Epoch (5.3 to 3.6 million years ago) in Europe, and the Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) in eastern Asia and the Mediterranean region. Since the most primitive species inhabit tropical forests in Africa, the genus probably originated on that continent.