New Species of Elephant Shrew Discovered in Tanzania

It seems that our planet still has secrets from us. The so-called grey-faced sengi has been one of them until zoologists eventually uncovered it in the mountains of Tanzania.

The grey-faced sengi is a strange-looking new species of mammal and the first addition to the giant elephant shrew family in over 100 years, as until now, zoologists had discovered only 15 species of sengis (or elephant shrews). However, the grey-faced sengi is also truly amazing, according to scientists from Italy’s Trento Museum of Natural Sciences and the California Academy of Sciences who found it.

"It is the first new species of giant elephant shrew to be discovered in more than 126 years," said one of the scientists, Galen Rathbun of the California Academy of Sciences.

Sengis are little furry animals that live on forest floors and eat insects. Living only in Africa, sengis are bizarre mixtures of more or less evolved species and they are also called elephant shrews.

However, the recently discovered grey-faced sengi or Rhynchocyon undzungwensis seems huge compared to his relatives; it weighs about 1.5 pounds (700 grams) and is about 25 percent larger than any other known elephant shrew.

The strange-looking, though funny, animal was first spotted by an Italian scientist, Francesco Rovero, in 2005.




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