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Have you sniffed out the body part photographed on page 29 of the July/August 2009 Smithsonian Zoogoer?


It's the nose of a black and rufous giant elephant-shrew!

by Jennifer Zoon

As the sun rises over eastern Kenya and Tanzania, a curious creature with a nose like a miniature elephant’s trunk emerges from its nest and scurries along the forest floor. The black and rufous giant elephant-shrew (Rhynchocyon petersi), or “sengi,” is on the hunt. Having caught a whiff of something intriguing, it twitches its snout in every direction and follows the smell straight to the source. Unlike an elephant’s trunk, the elephant-shrew’s snout doesn’t have the muscle power needed to lift or manipulate objects. But when an elephant shrew lifts its snout high into the air or smells the forest floor, the super-sensitive receptors pick up even the slightest scent change. They can actually see and hear about as well as humans, but even so, their nose knows best!

With its auburn red and brown coat, long tail and spindly legs, it doesn’t look much like an elephant or a shrew. That’s because a black and rufous elephant-shrew is neither of these animals. Instead, it belongs to its own order of mammals, called “sengis” in the Bantu language, which refers to their delicate, antelope-like legs. In the 1800s, scientists were so baffled by these mammals that they even classified them as insects!

sengi

A black and rufous giant elephant-shrew scurries through his exhibit at the National Zoo's Small Mammal House. (Mehgan Murphy/NZP)

Male and female sengis are difficult to tell apart because they are the same size, have similar color markings, and both genders scent-mark using a gland on their chest (called a “sternal” gland). The only way sengis tell one another apart is by the way they smell, so they distinguish themselves and their territory by frequently rubbing their scent gland on the ground. When researcher Fred Koontz studied sengis at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo 30 years ago, he discovered that males emit a kind of fruity smell, while females smell a bit sulfurous.

Sengi mates remain a pair for life but keep a fair distance from one another. Each individual sengi has a unique smell that lingers in its mate’s mind and helps them find one another when they separate. It also helps them identify any unwanted intruders bent on stealing their nests or mates.

Currently, there are fewer than 40 sengis in North American zoos. That makes the recent successful births of one baby in March and twins in May at the National Zoo an exciting step in conserving these curious creatures. Keepers were surprised to discover the babies about 15 days after their birth, when they first emerged from their well-hidden nests in search of food. Even at such a young age, these baby sengis were already approaching 20 inches long from their snout to the tip of their tails—almost the size of a full-grown adult! On your next visit to the Zoo, come sniff out the sengis at the Small Mammal House.

 

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