Although somatosensation in multiple whisker systems has been studied in considerable detail, relatively little information is available regarding whisker usage and movement patterns during natural behaviors. The Etruscan shrew, one of the smallest mammals, relies heavily on its whisker system to detect and kill its highly mobile insect prey. Here, we tracked whisker and body motion during prey...

Establishing non-human primate models of human diseases is an efficient way to narrow the large gap between basic studies and translational medicine. Multifold advantages such as simplicity of breeding, low cost of feeding and facility of operating make the tree shrew an ideal non-human primate model proxy. Additional features like vulnerability to stress and spontaneous diabetic characteristic...

-This paper presents a simple prioritytagging filtering mechanism, called SAP (Shrew Attack Protection), which protects well-behaved TCP flows against low-rate TCP-targeted Shrew attacks. In this scheme, a router maintains a simple set of counters and keeps track of the drop rate for each potential victim. If the monitored drop rates are low, all packets are treated as normal and equally comple...

Recent molecular evidence of genetically distinct hantaviruses in shrews, captured in widely separated geographical regions, corroborates decades-old reports of hantavirus antigens in shrew tissues. Apart from challenging the conventional view that rodents are the principal reservoir hosts, the recently identified soricid-borne hantaviruses raise the possibility that other soricomorphs, notably...

To the Editor: Borna disease (BD) is a fatal neurologic disorder in horses and sheep. The etiologic agent, Borna disease virus (BDV), belongs to the order Mononegavirales, which is composed of many reservoir-bound, highly pathogenic, and zoonotic viruses. To investigate whether small mammals, especially bicolored white-toothed shrews (Crocidura leucodon), which act as BDV reservoirs in Swit-zer...

Environmental processes govern demography, species movements, community turnover and diversification and yet in many respects these dynamics are still poorly understood at high latitudes. We investigate the combined effects of climate change and geography through time for a widespread Holarctic shrew, Sorex tundrensis. We include a comprehensive suite of closely related outgroup taxa and three ...

The structure and innervation of the papilla incisiva (papilla palatina) of the shrew, Sorex unguiculatus were studied by light and electron microscopy. The papillary region of the shrew consists of the papilla proper and two epithelial processes. The main part of the papilla, with the epithelial processes, lies anterior to the incisors and is thus in the vestibulum oris. The papilla is compose...

We karyotyped and sequenced 1,140 base pairs of the mitochondrial DNA cytochrome b of a specimen of Zarudny’s rock shrew (Crocidura zarudnyi) from Baluchestan, southeastern Iran, to clarify its cytogenetic and molecular relationships with other Eurasian species of Crocidura. According to the karyotype (2N 1⁄4 40, FN 1⁄4 50), Zarudny’s rock shrew belongs to the group of the lesser white-toothed ...

Pterygodermatites ( Paucipectines ) hymanae n. sp. (Rictulariidae) collected from the Incan shrew opossum, Lestoros inca , from Peru is described herein. These nematodes show a subapical, slightly dorsal oral opening and a laterally compressed buccal capsule with 2 conspicuous lateral walls and a dorsal wall. Each lateroventral wall possesses 4 relatively large denticles, and the dorsal wall ha...

Highly active small mammals need to capture prey rapidly and with a high success rate if they are to survive. We consider the case of the Etruscan shrew, which hunts prey including crickets almost as large as itself, and relies on its whiskers (vibrissae) to complete a kill. We model this hunting behaviour using a whiskered robot. Shrews strike rapidly and accurately after gathering very limite...