Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Soricomorpha > Soricidae > Sorex > Sorex minutus

Sorex minutus (Eurasian Pygmy Shrew)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

The Eurasian pygmy shrew (Sorex minutus), often known simply as the pygmy shrew, is a widespread shrew of northern Eurasia. It is the only shrew native to Ireland. Active throughout the day and night, the Eurasian pygmy shrew lives in undergrowth and leaf litter and lives off small insects and invertebrates. It has an average weight of 4 grams and has one of the highest metabolic rates of any animal, meaning it must eat at regular intervals — every two hours or so.
View Wikipedia Record: Sorex minutus

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
5
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
26
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 10.91
EDGE Score: 2.48
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  7 grams
Birth Weight [1]  0.235 grams
Diet [2]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Carnivore (Vertebrates)
Diet - Invertibrates [2]  70 %
Diet - Scavenger [2]  30 %
Forages - Ground [2]  100 %
Female Maturity [1]  10 months 4 days
Gestation [1]  24 days
Litter Size [1]  6
Litters / Year [1]  2
Maximum Longevity [3]  2 years
Snout to Vent Length [3]  2.362 inches (6 cm)
Weaning [1]  22 days

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

+ Click for partial list (100)Full list (183)

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Caucasus Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Turkey No
Himalaya Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan No
Irano-Anatolian Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Turkmenistan No
Mediterranean Basin Algeria, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Portugal, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey No
Mountains of Central Asia Afghanistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan No

Predators

Consumers

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 3Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 4Avian and mammalian predators of shrews in Europe: regional differences, between-year and seasonal variation, and mortality due to predation, Erkki Korpimäki & Kai Norrdahl, Ann. Zool. Fennici 26:389-400. 1989
♦ 5Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 6Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
♦ 7International Flea Database
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0