Here’s looking at shrew: How college students got first-ever photos of elusive California mammal
- Share via
The Mt. Lyell shrew, a mouse-like mammal that lives in the central Sierra Nevada, has never been photographed in the 100 years since it was discovered.
It took three industrious college students to figure out a way to finally capture the elusive critter’s image.
In October, Vishal Subramanyan, Prakrit Jain and Harper Forbes partnered with UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology to set more than 100 pitfall traps near the community of Lee Vining in the Eastern Sierra Nevada region, which is about 300 miles from San Francisco, according to CNN.
New discoveries from several archaeological sites in North and South America suggest that ancient people first arrived in the New World much earlier than scientists once thought.
The team checked the traps about every two hours for three days and four nights because the shrews die if they don’t eat every few hours, making them difficult to capture alive and photograph.
“The hardest part of getting the photos was, one, they’re incredibly fast cause they’re always running around,” Subramanyan told CBS News.
The trio set up a white background on the bottom of the box that held the shrew and glass on the top so they could take the photos, according to the news outlet.
The Mt. Lyell shrew was known to reside in just a few locations in the central Sierra Nevada near Mt. Lyell but, in recent years, has spread to communities on the central and eastern slopes of the Sierra, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
