Dog? Deer? Tapir? Unclear. The red-shouldered elephant shrew is a zoological curiosity. Spoiler: It does not belong to any of the animal species mentioned above.
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At the end of August, keepers at the Berlin Zoo first spotted the offspring, gender still unknown. Not only the young animal, but also its parents are new arrivals at the zoo: the male moved from the zoo to the west of the city in February, and a female from Basel Zoo joined them at the beginning of June. The two obviously liked each other right away, the gestation period is just over a month.
Little is known about their way of life
Perhaps it is due to the fact that the animals’ relationship is more rational than emotional. The zoo believes that red-shouldered elephant shrews “probably have a kind of monogamous ‘long-distance marriage'”. They are often seen alone, but live in the same territory. There is also no strong mother-child bond. If Wikipedia is to be believed, the mother animal “visits the young once a day to feed them”.
Otherwise, little is known about their lifestyle. “They are diurnal and live exclusively on the ground, where they either run or jump,” says the zoo. They are “cursorial”, meaning they can run extremely fast when in danger. When fully grown, they reach a head-body length of approximately 25 centimeters.
© Zoo Berlin
So what kind of animal is it? In zoos, elephant shrews are found in the kingdom of birds, but zoologically they are classified as elephant shrews – or “Macroscelidea” for gourmets. Despite their modest size, they are related to elephants, manatees and aardvarks.
In the wild, they occur exclusively in a narrow region between southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, as well as the offshore islands of Zanzibar and Mafia.
