A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Sorex araneus
Funny little creature! This one was diving into the lawn searching for bugs to eat. When finding a bug, the sound from eating it could be heard two meters away. It was very fearless, and when touching the fur on the back it squeaked loudly for a few seconds, but continued the search for food... One very interesting fact is that durin the winter, many species undergo morphological changes that drastically reduce their body weight. Shrews can lose between 30% and 50% of their body weight, shrinking the size of bones, skull and internal organs.
Wet lawn, close to woodlands.
Common Shrews are insectivores and are closer akin to genuine insectivores, as hedgehogs and moles, than with mice. It is 55–82 millimetres (2.2–3.2 in) long and weighs 5–12 grams (0.2–0.4 oz). . In the wild, the common shrew becomes about 16 months old.
Spotted on Jun 23, 2013
Submitted on Jun 23, 2013
4 Comments
The cats can kill them, but they dont eat them. A clever cat just do that mistake once :) Here is some more info:
Like any small mammal, the shrew has it share of natural enemies. Its principle threat comes from the owl and other similar birds of prey. They are not completely helpless against its attackers. The shrew uses camouflage as the first line of defense. Next, a shrew has glands in its skin that emit a foul odor and causes the shrew to taste bad. Finally, a shrew could uses its teeth that contain a poisonous saliva to fight off large predators. These poison tipped teeth are normally used to stun prey. http://www.bio.davidson.edu/Courses/anph...
Oh cats don't kill them??? Oh cats, they are terrible even tough I love them. I'm fighting with my neighbors' cats all the time. They kill all the birds that are residents of my garden. I don't have them in my garden but should try harder to find. Those water drops on the photo look really nice (1st photo) :). Hahah, just saw the video...looks too cute and nice :).
Normally these are very shy, but this one did not care the slightest about humans nor cats. (cats dont like them very much for some reason). He was raiding the lawn outside our house for two hours or so...
Not fair, how did you find this?? I can't find in Denmark. And I was somewhere out in Gothenburg for a week and never saw it, I even saw some amazing snakes but not this one. Nice spotting!