Yep, it's related to the manatee and the elephant.. kinda cool actually Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
LOL, really? You have no comments about this discovery, it just bothers you that its in this section. Really? We have shrews here. My cat brings them to me every spring and summer. I had never seen on til I moved her. Are they like mice in lifestyle/reproducing?
No. They're predators. Check out the teeth. They may kill and eat mice. And they don't gnaw. They do breed like mad, though, in the right circumstances. An "elephant shrew" is not a shrew like the ones your cat drags in. It's not even very closely related.
Good question. This thread should be moved to Biology & Genetics. There's a good reason that "shrewish" and "mousy" are two entirely different ways to insult a woman! No one wrote a play called "The Taming of the Mouse." You can say that again, if it is closely related to the elephant. There's a wide separation between those two orders of mammals. Shrews are also fairly close relatives of Homo sapiens. From what I've read, the first sloths were descended from primitive shrews, and the first primates were descended from sloths.
''Shrews are also fairly close relatives of Homo sapiens.'' That is very true. In fact, it is beleived that all life came from a shrew-like creature.
why are these shrews different than my shrew? Is my northern shrew not related to elephants? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Animals are often named by laymen with no thought for scientific classification. We just had a discussion of the "Tasmanian wolf" on another thread, and it is not even a placental mammal, much less a canid. Other examples are the sea cow, the prairie dog, and the American buffalo. People name animals according to their appearance or habits. The manatee is a grazer like a cow, and European explorers had seen a lot more buffalos in their travel than bisons. Just don't ask me what nearsighted person named the prairie dog! But the elephant shrew may have been named by a scientist, because it is in fact related more closely to elephants than to most other orders of mammals, even though it is unfortunately not a shrew at all. It just looks like one, the same way a thylacine looks like a wolf. However, your shrew is a true shrew. (Hmm, a catchy lyric for a song there.) Shrews and moles have their own order; they are soricomorphs, a really clever coinage that means "shrew-like animals." The soricomorphs are not closely related to the rodents, despite the resemblance. The tree shrew is also not a true shrew. (This song will be a big hit!)
Beautiful!!! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Kingdom Animalia-- animals --Phylum Chordata-- chordates ----Subphylum Vertebrata-- vertebrates ------Class Mammalia-- mammals --------Subclass Theria ----------Infraclass Eutheria ------------Order Macroscelidea-- Elephant Shrews ------------Order Soricomorpha --------------Family Soricidae-- shrews http://www.cbif.gc.ca/pls/itisca/ne...=every&p_string=containing&p_ifx=cbif&p_lang=
That might mislead someone into thinking that the macroscelids and soricomorphs are closely related because they're right next to each other on the list. In fact all placental mammals are eutherians. The only mammals falling outside that infraclass are the marsupials and the couple of egg-laying species. Humans, dogs, cows, mice, weasels, seals, whales, bats, elephants, horses, manatees, rabbits and all the ones I didn't think of are eutherians too. Some orders are more closely related to each other than others, and macroscelids and soricomorphs don't happen to be one of those closely-related pairs.
Well yeah, but how else to illustrate it ? Them being in separate orders says enough, as far as I'm concerned.. :shrug:
Yeah, but now they have all these in-between groupings like suborders. Some of the classes are indeed more closely related than others. Elephants and manatees, primates and shrews.
I know, but I thought the issue was that these elephant shrews were mistaken for regular shrews.. what I posted proves otherwise.
