The Somali sengi uses his nose to search through leaf contamination for insects to eat, Duke researcher Steven Heritage told CNN.
Strikingly, it is neither a barn nor a mouse, but is instead closely related to elephants, aardvarks and manatees, all of which have similar tree trunks.
Humans are more closely related to shrews and mice than elephant shrews, Heritage said.
Another interesting feature is the long hindquarters of the animal, which means that they are very adapted for running.
“The proportions of their hind legs are closer to antelopes than gazelles than they are to other small mammals,” said Heritage, adding that some species of sengi can run up to 30 kilometers per hour (18.6 miles per hour).
The mammals also form monogamous pairs for life, and live in a fairly small house range that is exclusive to other pairs, Heritage added.
“It’s a really fascinating combination of mammal traits that are not really to be found in any other order of mammals,” he said.
“In the scientific community, we try to use a reserved language that would classify the animals as ‘charismatic microfauna’, which translates from science speech to normal speech as ‘adorable little animals.'”
During a research trip to Djibouti in early 2019, a team including Heritage, Galen Rathbun of the California Academy of Sciences and Houssein Rayaleh of the Djibouti Nature Association set out to see if they could find the small mammal.
The team set more than 1,200 live traps using bait made from peanut butter, oatmeal and yeast – far from the normal diet of its bed of ants and termites, but Heritage explained why it is not such a strange choice.
“You can imagine if you’re a little mouse-mammal in the super-dry desert-rocky landscapes and you one night smell something that smells like marmite and peanut butter, you’ll control this,” he said.
In a paper published Tuesday in the journal Peer J, the team concluded that the Somali sengi was not only more common than previously thought, it lives over a larger area that occupies Somalia and Djibouti, and potentially Ethiopia.
Heritage believes that the lack of urban development and widespread agriculture in the arid areas that the Somali sengi calls home is good news for the animal.
Heritage plans to return to the Horn of Africa next year to place radio tags on some of the animals to work out more about where they live, how much space they use and how pairs are formed.
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