The Elephant, the Shrew and the Elephant Shrew Too

Image above from: www.mountcarmelschool.net/.../index.html

From the article below: 'Spare parts...' that's one perspective, surely.
But since we are not only made of stars, as Moby said, but also
More recently descended from shrew-like creatures,
That supposedly teamed up with fungi for survival's sake
In the wake of the meteor or whatever it'll turn out to have
Killed off the long-standing and vast Age of the Dinosaur...

To one of the most incredible examples of animal majesty
Alive today, both in stature and girth AND in memory and intelligence.
I am touched by elephants to a great extent; their poignancy.
Human beings are often defined by their original rituals
Surrounding the burial of the dead.

That care and attention, which we share with the Elephant
And geese for that matter, and who knows how many others
Makes me wonder whether they are sentient beings only or
Have an existential knowledge which puts them much closer
In manmade reckoning to what makes our species supposedly unique
Just saying.

What follows can be found at the crowning link and is not my writing.
Save for these musings in a few paragraphs.

Though sometimes mad with rage and destruction,
Elephants are most often helpful, strong, family-oriented, and they
Move me to laughter or tears in many stories about their deeds.
What they do, how they know , why they help,

And offer another example of how to live.

Above from:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/inside-an-elephants-womb/2006/11/24/11...

Below from: www.word info.info/words/index/ info/view_unit/3738

With a trunk similar to a pachyderm and an anteater's tongue, the elephant-shrew looks like a modified squirrel designed by someone with a creative imagination

They appear to be put together from spare parts of other animals. Their enclosure at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. calls them elephant-shrews, suggesting a cross between the largest land mammal on earth and the smallest. Just like elephants, they have delicate, quivering trunklike snouts, for rooting through leaf litter. Just like shrews, they eat insects, flicking elongated tongues from underneath the trunk to snap up their sought-after food. Their bodies are furry and rodentlike, with glossy black eyes and long, leathery tails.

Another special characteristic is their spindly antelope-like legs. Elephant-shrews, unlike many other small mammals, don't scuttle down burrows to escape hungry predators. Instead, they run away with great speed. They are said to be fast enough to be overly confident about their fast get-a-ways. When they spot an approaching predator, they may simply sit still and slap that elongated tail against the leaf litter. It is considered more accurate to think of elephant-shrews as dwarf anteater-antelopes. Their Bantu name is sengi.

Elephant shrew

Elephant-shrews are native only to Africa, where 15 species live in deserts, savannas, and forests. Since scientists discovered them in the mid-1800s, they have variously described these animals as insectivores (for example, shrews and moles), ungulates (antelopes and the like), even lagomorphs (primarily rabbits).

Apparently DNA analyses has placed them in their own separate order, Macroscelidea. It also seems that they are part of the newly proposed superorder Afrotheria, whose members emerged from a common ancestor some 100 million years ago. Though a small group, Afrotheria are decidedly diverse, ranging from tenrecs, hedge-hog-like creatures, some weighing less than a quarter-ounce, to elephants weighing 11,000 pounds, and also including aardvarks, manatees, hyraxes, and golden moles.

Unlike many other small mammals, which tend to be nocturnal, elephant-shrews are active by day.

—Excerpts from "Shrewd Configuration" by Richard Conniff
as seen in the Smithsonian, June, 2005.

More information about "elephant-shrews"

Naturalists who have never seen elephant-shrews in the wild, often refer to them as jumping shrews because they thought that their long rear legs were used for hopping. They have been called elephant-shrews because they have long snouts like elephants and eat insects (invertebrates) just like shrews do. Although elephant-shrews do have long noses to forage for insects, their similarity to true shrews has no further similarities.

With large eyes and long legs resembling those of small antelopes, a trunk-like nose, high-crowned cheek teeth similar to those of a herbivore, and a long rat-like tail; they have been shuffled by scientists from one taxonomic group to another.

Elephant shrew