Tiny Elephant Shrew, Thought to be Missing for 50 Years, Finally Spotted in Africa

For half a century scientists feared that the Somali elephant shrew had vanished from the face of the Earth. "Our interviews with local nomadic and pastoralist people indicated that they see sengis regularly and we were consistently told the same common name," said Houssein Rayaleh, of Association Djibouti Nature, who was on the team. The team also included global elephant shrew expert Galen Rathburn, who had been studying the creatures for decades but had never seen a live Somali sengi, according to researcher Steven Heritage, of the Duke University Lemur Center. Their findings prove that the Somali sengi "is currently extant" and lives far beyond the boundaries of Somalia, the researchers said in a study published in the journal PeerJ. "Usually when we rediscover lost species, we find just one or two individuals and have to act quickly to try to prevent their imminent extinction," said Robin Moore of Global Wildlife Conservation.