Is it a mouse or a shrew？ Strange animals were photographed in Yunnan virgin forest, with sharp mouths like mice and short ears like human ears.
Recently, Longling News, the propaganda department of Longling County Committee of Yunnan Province, released a message. In the inaccessible primitive dense forest of Longling County, photographers photographed a strange animal with a pointed mouth and a long tail, which looks like a mouse (qú). Is it a mouse or a "mouse"? After careful identification and identification by Deng Xiaobao, a senior engineer in Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden of China Academy of Sciences, it turned out to be a mammal, the North Tree Shrew, belonging to the genus Tree Shrew of the family Tree Shrew.
▲ Northern Tree Shrew
According to the data, North Tree Shrew is also known as China-Burma Tree Shrew, Sharp-billed Mouse, Stone Rat and Tree Fairy. Its morphological characteristics are particularly prominent and magical: it looks like a squirrel, but its tail is not as big as a squirrel’s canopy and its body is smaller than a squirrel. People often mistake the northern tree shrew for a squirrel; Ears are short and approximate to human ears; The mouth is longer and tapering than that of a squirrel.
In addition, in our country, people also call the North Tree Shrew "an amphibious nesting teacher" (because of its strong adaptability, it can not only dig caves in the ground for nesting, but also nest in trees) and "a master of animal language" (it can make eight different sounds to convey information), etc. These nicknames also reflect its unique living habits.
According to Deng Xiaobao, tree shrews are terrestrial or arboreal animals, especially active at dawn and dusk, good at climbing and jumping, quick in action, timid and easily frightened, and have a strong sense of territory. Forests or forest-edge shrubs and sparse tree shrubs that mainly inhabit tropical and subtropical mountains, hills and plain valleys. The food is mainly insects and fruits, and young birds, eggs and leaves can also be eaten.
It is understood that the northern tree shrew is mainly distributed in the area north of Crater Isthmus abroad, and in China, it is mainly distributed in Yunnan, Guizhou, Tibet and Hainan Island, which is the northernmost species of the whole family, and the only species of the family in China.
Tree shrews are listed as low-risk species in the List of Terrestrial Wild Animals with Ecological, Scientific and Social Values, the Red List of Biodiversity in China and Vertebrate Volume, and the protected species in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
Red Star journalist Gu Aigang According to Longling News
Editor Guo Zhuang edited Guan Li.
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