Scientists in East Africa have just announced a brand-new addition to the list of crazy-looking critters: The gray-faced sengi (Rhynchocyon udzungwensis), a large breed of elephant shrew.
Some animals are so unusual that, if you hadn’t seen them on The Discovery Channel, you wouldn’t believe they were real. Take the platypus, for example: Looking like a wacko blend between a duck, an otter, and a beaver, it seems to have hopped off the evolutionary train a little bit too early. Kangaroos always seemed a little surreal too, though we envy their built-in baby pouch. And just check out the creepy mug on the bioluminescent black dragonfish.
Well, scientists in East Africa have just announced a brand-new addition to the list of crazy-looking critters: The gray-faced sengi (Rhynchocyon udzungwensis), a large breed of elephant shrew whose existence has just been confirmed.
The strange new species was first identified by motion-sensing cameras in Tanzania in 2005, but an announcement couldn’t be made until scientists could confirm the animal’s existence in person. That happened the following year, during an expedition led by scientists Francesco Rovero and Galen Ruthbun, who used traditional twine snares to catch the animals.
Weighing in at 1.5 pounds (or 700 grams), the new species is about 50 percent larger than the other known varieties of elephant shrew, and according to surveys, it is thought that only two populations of the animal exist on earth, both in Tanzania’s Udzungwa Mountains. Rovero referred to the sengi as “living fossils,” claiming they’d barely evolved from species that existed more than 35 million years ago.
Though the sengi is an endangered population, scientists believe that its habitat is remote enough that humans shouldn’t pose a threat to their existence in the near future. But if you end up in the Udzungwa Mountain region, watch where you step, just in case.