A rare species of ‘special concern’, that had never before been caught on camera – while alive – was finally captured on film by a team of student researchers.
The never-before-pictured Mount Lyell shrew was photographed alive for the first time in November by three young researchers, Vishal Subramanyan, 22, Prakrit Jain, 20, and Harper Forbes, 22.
Until its November ‘capture’, the Sierra Nevada-based shrew was the only known mammal in the state of California that had never been caught on camera.
Subramanyan said his lucky shot might be the first time a human has seen a living Mount Lyell shrew.
‘The shrew hasn’t been trapped or recorded in two decades,’ Subramanyan told SFGATE. ‘So it’s very possibly one of the most poorly known mammal species in California.’
The elusive mammal is 9 to 10 centimeters long and weighs between 2 and 3 grams, according to the researchers’ measurements.
The petite animal occupies a small, elevated area of the Eastern Sierra Nevada and feeds on insects, although biologists know little else about its diet.
It has small, beady eyes and a pointy snout and spends most of its time below ground.
The first identification of the Mount Lyell shrew took place more than 100 years ago, when biologist Clinton Hart Merriam discovered the ‘rare’ species.
However, since then it’s received little attention from mammalogists.
The Mount Lyell shrew – or the Sorex lyelli, as it is scientifically known – has received such little scientific attention partly because of how difficult it is to capture one.
Like its speed, the shrew has an incredibly fast metabolism and will die if they don’t eat every two hours, Subramanyan told the outlet.
To catch a living shrew, Subramanyan said he and his partners needed to monitor their set traps constantly. If the researchers left the shrew in an overnight trap, it is more than likely they would awake to a dead shrew.
Jain, Forbes and Subramanyan, who set out on a grueling days-long project in hopes to picture the miniature mammal in early November, told SFGATE that they each slept for no longer than two hours at a time, checking the traps regularly.
Subramanyan said that he and Jain – both UC Berkeley students – first hatched the idea after trapping and photographing small rodents in the Sierra Nevada on a field trip for their mammalogy class.
After the trio received a permit from California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, the group kicked off their taxing three-night expedition on November 1.
They then set up camp in the high desert of the Eastern Sierra Nevada.
The research trio used augurs to dig holes near stream and wetland areas.
Inside the newly formed holes, Subramanyan said he and the other placed pitfall traps – which he described as ‘literally just plastic cups.’
The wildlife analysts then filled the traps with cat food and mealworms in hopes to lure the mini mammal.
Subramanyan said they captured two shrews within the first two hours, and to his surprise, the Mount Lyell shrew was among the first they trapped.
The 22-year-old said the content-rich trip was among the hardest ventures he has ever experienced as the students completed their work on minimal sleep and in freezing temperatures.
‘At night, temperatures reached 15 degrees,’ he said.
‘It was kind of go, go, go,’ Subramanyan said.
‘You trap some shrews, you photograph them, you release them, and by that time there are more shrews. So, it was pretty nonstop.’
Over the course of the expedition, the group captured 15 shrews of four different species: the vagrant shrew, montane shrew, Merriam’s shrew and the Mount Lyell shrew.
The trio was able to confirm their findings using a scalpel to collect the tips of the shrew’s tails, which they then ran genetics tests on at the California Academy of Sciences.
Jain, Forbes and Subramanyan also recorded measurements of the shrews’ lengths and ear sizes – observations that had previously only been performed with dead specimens.
Through their one-of-a-kind photographs, Subramanyan now hopes to further public recognition for the little-known species and support future conservation efforts.
‘Photography is really important for cataloging biodiversity on a rapidly changing planet,’ Subramanyan said.
‘When it comes to California’s shrews, there’s so few good photos out there. So taking these photos that haven’t really been taken before helps the public understand and foster a connection with these animals.’
The state of California doesn’t classify the Mount Lyell shrew as a threatened or endangered species, but the state lists it as a mammal species of special concern – a designation that offers it protections.
A 2015 UC Davis study rated the shrew as either ‘highly vulnerable’ or ‘extremely vulnerable’ to climate change, depending on emission scenarios.
That study projected that the shrew could lose between 52.6 percent and 89.5 percent of its habitat by the 2080s.
The shocking discovery comes just after another elusive creature known for its ferocious hunting skills was caught on camera during a rare sighting in Pennsylvania earlier this year.
The sleek forest-dwelling mammal, known as a fisher, was though to have been eliminated in the Keystone state due to unregulated hunting and massive deforestation in the late 19th century.
At the time of the latest trail cam sighting in June set in the woods in Murrysville, the fisher had previously only been spotted in areas two to three hours away.
‘I put the camera on an old fallen log in a remote area and kept it there several months,’ Bill Powers, founder the wildlife streaming service, PixCams, told Murrysville Star.
‘I pulled the SD card last week and to my amazement it captured a photo of a fisher in mid-June,’ he continued.
The fisher is a mid-sized carnivore, and the second largest member of the weasel family in Pennsylvania.
Adult males can weigh up to 15 pounds and females up to nine pounds. Males are typically longer, ranging from 35 to 48 inches, while females are usually between 30 to 37 inches.
Surprisingly, fishers are not named for their fishing skills, as the omnivorous member of the weasel family does not typically eat fish.
Instead, the animal was named for its similar characteristics to the European polecat, or ‘fitch’.
Powers described finding the footage as ‘like Christmas morning’.