"Rodents" to cover, in order of appearance: rat, mouse, shrew.
A friend sent me a link to
Fat rat stuck in manhole rescued by firefighters in Germany https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/27/fat-rat-stuck-in-manhole-rescued-by-firefighters-in-germany.
source: screenshot from above linkAnd I thought: I recently saw the opposite:
How small a hole can a mouse get through? Experiments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGXYZwZEZa0&t=9s
Shrew squeezes through 16.5 mm hole, epic struggle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifCgW1Q_rto
That's how I feel when I go through the bars of the "slim-up room" in 39 underground sauna (a room that only people who manage to squeeze through the metal bars can enter).
No copyright claimed 2019 ChristianPFC
Shrews are not rodents. They are insectivores.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes
Biology Prof
You are right. Not my area of expertise, but Wikipedia says so as well:
DeleteAlthough its external appearance is generally that of a long-nosed mouse, a shrew is not a rodent, as mice are. It is in fact a much closer relative of hedgehogs and moles,...
But I will leave the title for lack of a better word.
Actually, that is debatable. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "The definition of Insectivora was significantly modified in 1956 by the insectivore specialist P.M. Butler, who raised Lipotyphla to the rank of order (now containing only hedgehogs, shrews, moles, solenodons, tenrecs, and golden moles), assigned elephant shrews and tree shrews to separate orders, and abandoned the name Insectivora. Most professional mammalogists now use Lipotyphla instead of Insectivora and informally refer to the group as either lipotyphlans or insectivores. Others, however, prefer Insectivora, and that name is still used in lay publications as well as some professional compilations."
ReplyDeleteI meant the classification as insectivores is debatable.
ReplyDelete