Are elephant shrews more elephant, or more shrew?
If it looks like a shrew, moves like a shrew and snuffles like a shrew, it is a shrew, right? That’s what zoologists of the 1800s thought. Before DNA profiling, physical characteristics were the best way of discerning animal relationships, so elephant shrews were placed squarely in the shrew family. But genetic evidence has revealed that they evolved independently in Africa, and instead puts them in their own order. This makes them more closely related to elephants, aardvarks and manatees than to shrews – or even to rodents and rabbits. Still, with little furry bodies and snouty noses, they do at least look like shrews. As such, they are an example of convergent evolution – where similar physical characteristics arise entirely independently, due to adapting to similar environmental pressures or evolving to fill a similar niche. In fact, these rather adorable animals are more shrew-elephant, than elephant-shrew.