KEEPER FEATURE
Keeper Feature is a personal report from one of our very own Zoo keepers. If you would like to ask any questions please click here  and it will be forward onto our Animal Department.



Common Tree Shrew

by Randi Genung, Zookeeper           
Spring, 2006                                                                             
                                                                                               

Our Common Tree Shrews are a new exhibit for the 2006 season.  So we are extremely excited to introduce them to all of you.  We received two 3 year olds from the Columbus Zoo & Aquarium in Ohio, the male’s name is Ravi Shankar and the female is Bindi.  Since they have already produced two successful litters, we unfortunately will not have any babies running around. 

Common Tree Shrews are very interesting animals that come all the way from Asia.  Everywhere from East Nepal to Southeast China, down into the Malay Peninsula, and over into many islands including Hainan, Sumatra, Java and Borneo.  In this area they inhabit tropical rain forests, secondary growth forests and bamboo scrub.  They fill in a very important niche in this ecosystem, since they are diurnal (active in the day time) and omnivorous.  They mostly eat fruit, seeds, leaves, small mammals, lizards, spiders, ants and many more insects.  They spend the majority of their time in the trees but they can be found on occasion on the ground.  Unlike some cousin species who spend most of their time on the ground.

           

There are some very fascinating facts about the Tree Shrew.  They are a mammal but are only closely related to Tree Shrews.  They are their own order of Scandentia, their own family of Tupaiidae and their own genus of Tupaia (Tupai is Malaysian for squirrel).    So this makes them really hard to compare to any other animal in the zoo or animal world.  Their movements and noises are a lot like squirrels, their appearance is like the shrews and they are apprehensive like marmosets.   However, they are none of these animals or part of their order or families, even though they were once thought to be.  There was once a large debate over where they belonged; some thought they were shrews, some thought they were squirrels, and others thought they were primates.  They were thought to be squirrels due to their elongated bodies, big bushy tails and a great sense of smell.  They were thought to be shrews since English explorers back in 1780 misidentified them as shrews from back in Europe, which are insectivores (insect eaters), due to their pointy snout.  And in the 1920s, they were thought to be primates due to comparisons of skulls, muscles and reproductive systems in both primates and tree shrews and the fact that they both evolved to live in trees (arboreal).  All these theories were wrong and that is how it was discovered that they are unique.  Additionally, it was discovered that they have a special throat gland for marking, which is different that what a lot of species have including primates, but it is found in some insectivores.