Smallest mammal in the world Etruscan shrew weighs only 1.8 grams
The smallest mammal in the world, the Etruscan shrew, weighs 1.8 grams, has more than 200 bones, and needs to consume a lot of food to maintain its body temperature. It hunts quickly, and has a huge difference in size, but it comes from the same ancestor. The dwarf shrew and the blue whale have similar bones and a miniature structure.
The Etruscan shrew, also known as the pygmy shrew, is one of the smallest mammals in the world. It typically weighs about 1.8 grams (0.063 ounces) to 2.7 grams (0.095 ounces). Its small size and lightweight make it fascinating in the animal kingdom!
Can you believe it? The smallest mammal in the world weighs only 1.8 grams, but it has more than 200 bones, which is about the same as the largest blue whale weighing more than 200 tons!
This is the Etruscan shrew (Suncus etruscus), also known as the pygmy shrew, the smallest known mammal in the world. It weighs only 1.8 grams and is 3-5 centimeters long, but consumes 1.5 to twice its body weight in food every day, and some say even 8 times.
Why do they need to eat so much? It’s simple. Their bodies are too small and their surface area to volume ratio is too high. If they are not careful, they will get hypothermia and freeze to death. They can only rely on extremely fast metabolism to maintain their body temperature and save their lives.
Therefore, its heart is also large, and its heart rate is extremely fast, up to more than 1,500 times per minute, and its respiratory rate is 600 to 800 times per minute. In cold seasons or when food is scarce, the dwarf shrew will enter a temporary dormant state. When it recovers, its muscles will tremble at a frequency of 58 times per second. How fast is this frequency? It is close to the frequency of the alternating current we use in daily life.
Pygmy shrews mainly feed on insects, earthworms, lizards, etc. They have extremely fast predation reaction and their biting speed is 12 times the speed of human blinking. They can easily prey on prey of similar size to themselves.
There are more than 6,400 species of mammals on Earth, all of which come from the same ancestor. Elephants weigh 6 tons, and blue whales weigh 200 tons, which is 110 million times the size of the smallest pygmy shrew. It took only 160 million years to form such a huge size difference. They really have their own survival rules. No wonder they can occupy almost all habitats on Earth.
Like us humans, most mammals have about 200 bones in their bodies. Even though the pygmy shrew is so small, it has about 200-210 bones, while the blue whale has about 300. The largest mammal has a similar structure to the smallest. Can you imagine what a miniature shape the pygmy shrew’s bones are?
