Grey-faced elephant-shrew  (Rhynchocyon udzungwensis)

It was as recently as 2005 that a camera-trap, placed in mountainous forest in Tanzania, captured images of a species of elephant-shrew (also known as sengis) that had never been seen before. Spurred by these images, a group of scientists went to investigate, and in 2006 captured a number of individuals that were to become known as grey-faced elephant-shrews (2). This species is 25 percent larger than any sengi previously described and also differs in the colour of its sparse, glossy and stiff fur. It is, as the name suggests, grey on the face and forehead, turning slightly grizzled yellow-rufous to the shoulders, then orange-rufous on the sides and jet black on the lower rump and thighs. Making this elephant-shrew even more colourful is a wide, indistinct, maroon stripe that extends down the back (2).

Elephant shrews are named for their long, trunk-like snout, which for the first two centimetres is essentially naked and black (2). Bizarrely, recent molecular evidence has shown that elephant shrews are more closely related to elephants than true shrews (3). Other body parts of the elephant-shrew resemble other animals: the legs are long, like those of a small antelope, and the long tail is like that of a rat (4). The tails of elephant shrews are lined with bristles, each bristle terminating in a tiny knob (4). The tail of this species is black on the upper surface, dark brown underneath, and has a white band, four to six centimetres long, near the tip (2).