What is "elephant shrew"

Shrew \Shrew\, n. [See Shrew, a.]

1. Originally, a brawling, turbulent, vexatious person of either sex, but now restricted in use to females; a brawler; a scold.

   A man . . . grudgeth that shrews [i. e., bad men] have prosperity, or else that good men have adversity.
   --Chaucer.

   A man had got a shrew to his wife, and there could be no quiet in the house for her.
   --L'Estrange.

2. [AS. scre['a]wa; -- so called because supposed to be venomous. ] (Zo["o]l.) Any small insectivore of the genus Sorex and several allied genera of the family Sorecid[ae]. In form and color they resemble mice, but they have a longer and more pointed nose. Some of them are the smallest of all mammals.

   Note: The common European species are the house shrew ( Crocidura araneus), and the erd shrew ( Sorex vulgaris) (see under Erd.). In the United States several species of Sorex and Blarina are common, as the broadnosed shrew ( S. platyrhinus), Cooper's shrew ( S. Cooperi), and the short-tailed, or mole, shrew ( Blarina brevicauda). Th American water, or marsh, shrew ( Neosorex palustris), with fringed feet, is less common. The common European water shrews are Crossopus fodiens, and the oared shrew (see under Oared).

   Earth shrew, any shrewlike burrowing animal of the family Centetid[ae], as the tendrac.

   Elephant shrew, Jumping shrew, Mole shrew. See under Elephant, Jumping, etc.

   Musk shrew. See Desman.

   River shrew, an aquatic West African insectivore ( Potamogale velox) resembling a weasel in form and size, but having a large flattened and crested tail adapted for rapid swimming. It feeds on fishes.

   Shrew mole, a common large North American mole ( Scalops aquaticus). Its fine, soft fur is gray with iridescent purple tints.

n. Any of several small, insectivorous long-nosed mammals, of the order Macroscelidea, native to Africa.

Elephant shrews, or jumping shrews, are small insectivorous mammals native to Africa, belonging to the family Macroscelididae, in the order Macroscelidea, whose traditional common English name comes from a fancied resemblance between their long noses and the trunk of an elephant, and an assumed relationship with the shrews (family Soricidae) in the order Insectivora. Nonetheless, elephant shrews are not classified with the superficially similar true shrews, but are ironically more closely related to elephants and their kin within the newly recognized Afrotheria; the biologist Jonathan Kingdon has proposed they instead be called sengis (one sengi), a term derived from the Bantu languages of Africa.

They are widely distributed across the southern part of Africa, and although common nowhere, can be found in almost any type of habitat, from the Namib Desert to boulder-strewn outcrops in South Africa to thick forest. One species, the North African elephant shrew, remains in the semiarid, mountainous country in the far northwest of the continent.

The creature is one of the fastest small mammals. Despite their weight of under half a kilogram, they have been recorded to reach speeds of 28.8 km/h.