Hansa 4111 Elephant Mouse Sitting

Product Description

Hansa Plush Elephant Mouse 14cm The elephant mouse (more commonly known as elephant shrew) is native to Africa & can quite fairly be described as strange looking creatures! For starters, as their name suggests, they have an elongated nose similar to an elephant's trunk, coupled with a striking resemblance to a shrew (though unrelated to shrews). They are small mammals with brownish grey coats, mouselike tails & rather long legs for their size. These long legs enable them to hop around like rabbits. Elephant shrews have incredibly mobile noses which they can twist & rotate in search of food. Their diet consists of insects, spiders, centipedes, millipedes & earthworms. Lovely! On finding food they use their tongue to flick it into their mouth
- in much the same way as an anteater. Elephant shrews pair up & live in common territory but it seems there's little love-loss between them as they are seldom together. However, they are very intolerant of close neighbours & trespassers are violently evicted. The males evict male interlopers & the females deal with female intruders. These encounters involve screaming, sparring, snapping & kicking
- all of which can happen so rapidly that it appears to be a blur of animals tumbling on the forest floor. This is quite a complex little animal to put it mildly & could never be described as boring.