Sunday, April 5, 2009

Black and Rufous Elephant Shrew

The party was a little quieter then I was expecting I hope people had a little bit of fun. Tomorrow we have a Funker vogt show in town. I'd kind of heard about it but I had assumed it would be in Chicago, hopefully there will be tickets at the door.

Art
sphinx

Animal

The black and rufous elephant shrew (Rhynchocyon petersi) is a relatively large sengi from Kenya and Tanzania. They are an odd group of mammals, elephant shrews are actually not related to shrews and are actually part of an ancient and once very diverse group of mammals that includes elephants, sea cows, aardvarks, hyraxes, golden moles, and tenrecs. They have a scent gland on their chest called a sternal gland that they use to scent mark their territory, sometimes as often as 5 times a minute. The males and females have a detectably different scents. They are monogamous and both the males and females will defend a territory but the pairs do not spend a lot of time together. Oh and they have a long flexible nose.

2 comments:

  1. Ours was weirdly quiet, too. Something was kinda off - dunno what.

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  2. I think I know what you mean feeling a general off-ness as well.

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