#afrotherian

[vintagewildlife]

African elephant in a lake By: G. D. Plage From: Wild, Wild World of Animals: Elephants and Other Land Giants 1976

[morphimus]

thank you so much!!!!!!! I just looked up "what the sneef I'm snorfin here animal" and your tags from a year ago informed me that it was an elephant shrew!!! those are such delightful creatures!!!! you are responsible for bringing so much joy into my life!!!!!!! Thank you thank you thank you!!!!! I love their silly little snouts!!!!

See, it's moments like this that are the real reason why I tag everything!

And yeah elephant shrews rule.

Look at this little freak. It owns.

Elephant shrews (aka sengis) are related to aardvarks, manatees, and of course, elephants. (They aren't especially closely related to true shrews though.)

They belong to the taxonomic clade Afrotheria, which are basically a bunch of mammals that evolved in Africa in the Cretaceous period when it wasn't connected to Eurasia, so they diversified and spread out into lots of different environmental niches.

Presumably a lot of these Afrotherians died out as a result of competition with animals in the same niches from Eurasia when the continents came together, but thankfully we are still left with megafaunal elephants, big ol' sea cows, tiny insectivorous elephant shrews, semi-aquatic giant elephant shrews (potamogalidae), golden moles, and probably my personal favorite: tenrecs which are funny little hedgehoggy mouse-lookin' things that are basically only found in Madagascar.

Like, look at this picture of a lowland streaked tenrec.

It looks like an electric type Pokemon dude.

images yoinked from wikipedia (because I was too lazy to find more interesting or obscure pictures lmao): 1 round-eared elephant shrew 2 lowland streaked tenrec

[nature-and-biodiversity-blog]

Lowland Streaked Tenrec Hemicentetes semispinosus

[vintagewildlife]

Young bull elephant arguing with an old matriarch who wants him to leave the herd By: Iain & Oria Douglas-Hamilton From: Wild, Wild World of Animals: Elephants and Other Land Giants 1976

[vintagewildlife]

Elephants comforting a dying elderly matriarch By: Horst Munzig From: Wild, Wild World of Animals: Elephants and Other Land Giants 1976

[vintagewildlife]

Rufous elephant shrew (Elephantulus rufescens) By: Ernest P. Walker From: Walker's Mammals of the World 1964

[vintagewildlife]

Indian elephant "Kumari" By: Jessie Cohen From: The Zoogoer 1994

[vintagewildlife]

Elephants grazing at the foothills of Ruwenzori By: Eliot Elisofon From: Life Nature Library: The Mountains 1962