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Elephant shrew

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Life of an elephant shrew on an african Savanah

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Meet the Giant Elephant Shrew | National Geographic

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Giant Elephant Shrews!

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Elephant Shrew (The Fastest Small Mammals)

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Elephant Shrews dancing in the morning sun

Elephant shrews, also called jumping shrews or sengis, are small insectivorous mammals native to Africa, belonging to the family Macroscelididae, in the order Macroscelidea. Their traditional common English name "elephant shrew" comes from a fancied resemblance between their long noses and the trunk of an elephant, and their superficial similarity with shrews in the order Eulipotyphla. However, phylogenetic analysis revealed that elephant shrews are not classified with true shrews, but are in fact more closely related to elephants than shrews. In 1997 the biologist Jonathan Kingdon proposed that they instead be called "sengis", a term derived from the Bantu languages of Africa, and in 1998 they were classified into the new clade Afrotheria.