Discovery of New Elephant-Shrew Species

Hello everyone! Thanks to CI for organizing this and inviting me to the live chat, and thanks to all of you readers for your interesting questions. I will reply to as many of them as I can!

Yes, it is! Rhynchocyon udzungwensis is from Greek and actually means “long-nosed dog” - dogs being really large relatives to elephant-shrews, of course.

This is a really good question. Hopefully, the exposure this animal gets will prompt more interest in protecting it. Perhaps we can raise more funds to protect this species and the habitat where it lives. Its range is already in protected areas – one is a national park and one is a new nature reserve. But it’s important to ensure these areas are protected and managed effectively.

The forests where this animal lives are far enough away from people and the nearest villages - they are quite remote forests. So it’s not so often that people go near where the animals are, which is good. Even with the new monkey that was found in 2004 in the same forest; we haven’t observed any increase in people going near it. We are quite confident that the place is quite safe. We need patrolling, obviously. In the national park, there’s a habit of letting people enter for firewood collection, so we’re trying to look for alternatives to this practice. But really, it’s about enforcement, like any other protected area.

Yes, it is a brand new species. There were no records or information about it at all before this. But it’s true that sometimes new species are announced but are not actually new. They may only be previously recorded, but not scientifically described. Or it’s just a consequence of reclassification of groups of other animals with genetic similarities and the like. So then new species are actually animals that are already know.

But in this case, the elephant-shrew is a brand new species. Completely unknown before. Not even by the local people. As I said, it’s far enough in the forest from the villages, so most of the local people just didn’t know about it.

Yes. We estimate that there are a few thousand of them. But we don’t have enough information to confirm this estimation yet. We need to do more work to have an accurate number. Because its range is so narrow, it’s still an endangered species – even if there are thousands.

Domanda interessante, potrebbe essere una forma di gigantismo dovuta alle basse temperature, oppure perché è una specie conservativa e specie antiche erano probabilmente più grandi.

Interesting question, its giantism might be related to cool temperatures, or because it might be an ancient form that were probably larger. [The question was: I am surprised that in such restricted habitat there is a giant form whilst usually insulated forms are small.]

It doesn’t have any tusks, but it’s relatedness to elephants is mainly due to the molecular components, like DNA, let's say. But they do have kind of a trunk-like nose which is similar to the elephant.

It's his face that is gray, but as you can see in the photos, the rest of him is extremely colorful, from yellow to purple, reddish and black.

They don’t make any sounds that we have observed yet. Some other related species have been reported to vocalize, but we don’t know about this new one.

My first reaction was I actually went through the photographs from our camera traps. We knew of this elephant-shrew and thought it might be interesting, but I was obviously extremely surprised and excited to see that it was something in fact very different.

Yes. They do nest like other giant elephant-shrews by digging a hole underneath the leaf litter in forests. They rest there overnight and they breed there like other giant elephant-shrews. Their nests look like piles of leaves, very thick. Even in the rainy season, these animals will be dry. The nests are quite interesting because they dig the hole first and then cover themselves with leaves from the surrounding area, which I find to be quite interesting.

Well, it was part of my research for my post-doctorate degree. When we had these interesting sightings of a possible new elephant-shrew, I went back and put camera traps. The expedition we organized in 2006 to trap the specimens and study them was funded through CEPF and was a joint project with Trento Museum of Natural Sciences and National Geographic Society.

It feeds mostly on invertebrates - we think mostly insects, like other elephant-shrews do. But we need to do a little bit more work to understand this better.

The long nose, which is like a trunk of an elephant, helps him to look for insects in the litter and find food. There’s a very nice video on CI’s website on which this can be seen. It’s video from our camera trap.

Regarding climate change, this is an interesting question. We can predict with climate change that some of these forests, especially the montane forests, will actually decrease and therefore this creature’s habitat will decrease in the long run. This animal is only found in montane forests.

Not everything can be classified from tissue samples, unfortunately. In fact, for this particular group the classification is based on the morphology – especially the colors, the size, and the distribution. So we needed only a very few specimens to be able to classify and describe it. We believe that such a small number cannot alter significantly the population size. We knew there were probably several of them from our sightings and camera trap videos. Unfortunately, there is no alternative to having at least one specimen.

Ah, yes. First we should say that this isn’t a true shrew, which is like a little mouse. This is an elephant-shrew, so much different from a taxonomical and evolutionary point of view. They are a completely distinct order of animals, the elephant-shrews. And they’re seen from a molecular standpoint. They’re actually more related to elephants and other African mammals, such as aardvarks.

It’s very exciting to discover a new species like this, especially in times of extinction crises. It brings a lot of hope and is very exciting.

Yeah, probably there are still more mammal species to be discovered. I don’t know if it’s many more. But there are more, especially of this size. Smaller animals are discovered and described more often. It’s important because probably for a single mammal being discovered, several other species might be discovered. It’s not a rule, but for every new mammal in Tanzania we have found, for example, there are maybe 40 amphibians. This just means the area hasn’t been researched enough or that we haven’t used the right techniques. Discovering a mammal is a good indication that there’s more to find in a given habitat.

There were only four captured and we found a fifth, which was killed by a predator. So we only collected four. The initial research was aimed at describing this species. So the key point was to collect specimens and get an idea of its distribution, which I do through camera trapping. And we needed to describe the habitat where it lives. From sightings we had an idea of the elephant-shrew's abundance. We have planned to go back and do more camera trapping and get genetic material, so collecting more specimens - not for taking them but for learning about them – phytogenetic analysis, for example.

Hopefully, this will happen this year. I’d like to go back in June or July and conduct more research.

Thank you! Hopefully you can find one too if you become a field biologist. In the meantime, keep an eye out for interesting creatures in your own backyard and ask your parents to take you on holiday in interesting tropical places! You’ll see very interesting creatures there.

So even if we think there are a few thousand, its range is confined to two forests in the mountains. This qualifies it to be a rare species and will likely be classified as Endangered by the IUCN. We’re already working on this, so hopefully by the end of this year we will have confirmed IUCN classification.

These are interesting because they are monogamous animals. So they live in pairs. “They” meaning giant elephant-shrews. We think this new species has the same social structure of other giant elephant-shrews. So it probably reproduces throughout the year; that’s what we found with other similar species. There can be up to three young, which emerge from the nest after two weeks. But it’s not certain how long these young stay with the mother. We don’t have enough information to know this yet.

Most likely, raptors, or birds of prey, eat the elephant-shrews. We found an elephant-shrew that had been killed. It looked like a raptor kill, but we don’t know for certain. Other species are known to be hunted by people, but not this particular species of elephant-shrew. It’s far enough from the villages to be safe from humans.

I was in Tanzania since 1999, before I start to work in Ndunlulu in 2002. I had heard of this area that was incredibly interesting for biodiversity. So I started to look for ways to work there. Before Ndunlulu, I was a volunteer with a local environmental NGO in the Dodoma region, which is a much drier area, so I was doing more community conservation.

This giant elephant-shrew was discovered in the Eastern Arc Mountains in Tanzania.

In South Africa shrews are not giant elephant-shrews. They are much smaller, a 50-gram animal that lives mainly in the desert. The giant elephant-shrews are confined to central and east Africa. They mainly live in forests, in contrast to others, and are much larger, up to 700 grams.

These are not aggressive animals. They can jump and escape very quickly - they're fast - but we didn't observe any aggression.

You’re right. The aardvark is the only member of that order, but there are different orders which include elephant-shrews. It’s order is Macroscelides. The elephant has a different order. So they’re all distantly related through a super order, Afrotheria, which includes several orders like these. It’s been proposed through molecular analysis. A super order might have evolved in Africa millions of years ago.

In the long run, these forests will likely become more threatened by humans because of increasing population pressure outside of the protected area. Eventually, the habitat might decrease. Climate change will likely have a distinct effect. And there is some illegal logging activity in this area, but fortunately it’s limited. It’s mainly in the lower part of the forests, near the villages, and this animal is found in the higher areas of the forest.

As I said, part of the population is in a national park and is well protected, another is in a newly established nature reserve. So we hope this will be funded and managed effectively enough for these forests to be protected. It’s a new category of protected area, so we don’t yet know what can and will be done to manage it. We hope new discoveries like this, in this particular forest, will encourage those who can to protect the park as best they can.

We know that there are probably perhaps millions of species to be described yet. Most are invertebrates, which can be found pretty much everywhere, but especially in the tropics because they are more diverse. We also know there are probably millions of undescribed species in the deep oceans, below 1,000 meters.

It certainly gives us hope that there are still new forms of life to be discovered. Because of the extinction crises, we need to be faster in our discoveries and act more quickly to protect new species when we find them. Like the giant elephant-shrew, many new species are endangered by the time we find them and are bound to be very restricted.

It was a great pleasure to be with you. Thanks for your interest in this new species and for being so keen in the conservation of it and the fascinating forests in which it lives.