'Extinct' tiny elephant shrew makes a big comeback

A tiny mammal that had been thought extinct for half a century has made a "big comeback" in the Horn of Africa.

An article in rfi.fr said, "for half a century scientists feared that the Somali elephant shrew had vanished from the face of the earth. No one had seen so much as a whisker."

It said that the tiny mammal has a probing trunk-like nose" resembling that of an elephant's, though a teeny-tiny one.

According to researchers, the tiny mammal "was quietly thriving in the arid, rocky landscape of the Horn of Africa."

"The elusive, insect-eating creature is neither an elephant nor a shrew," researcher said.

Called the Somali sengi, the mammal had been lost to science since the 1970s, leaving just the 39 preserved specimens held in the world's natural history museums as the only physical evidence that it ever existed.

VIDEO For half a century scientists feared that the Somali elephant shrew had vanished from the face of the Earth. No one had seen so much as a whisker.

But the tiny mammal was quietly thriving in the arid landscape of the Horn of Africa, researchers said https://t.co/enl0JPjx5O pic.twitter.com/BRgfD62m6k

— AFP news agency (@AFP) August 18, 2020

Agence France Presse reported, "It is a sengi -- a distant relation to aardvarks, elephants and manatees -- the size of a mouse, with powerful legs that allow it to run at speeds of nearly 30 kilometres (20 miles) an hour."

A group from Global Wildlife Conservation even included it on its "25 most wanted lost species" list.

But during an expedition last year scientists found the animals still roaming the wild, discovering that the Somali sengi is not confined to Somalia at all.

The research mission was looking for different kinds of sengis in Djibouti, the small Horn of Africa coastal nation that borders Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, AFP said. —LBG, GMA News