There is a small mammal living in a field near you that you may have caught sight of a few times but paid little attention to ...

Some mammals hibernate to survive in winter, but the Eurasian common shrew (Sorex araneus) employs Dehnel's phenomenon to get through it. This is a metabolic process that enables shrews to conserve ...

The common shrew looks unremarkable, a few grams of fur and teeth scurrying under leaf litter. Yet this tiny mammal performs one of the strangest tricks in biology, shrinking its own brain and skull ...

Most mammals take one of two approaches to survive the winter: they either hibernate, slowing their bodies to a near standstill, or they bulk up with extra fat to burn when food runs low. Then there’s ...

Last autumn, I was canoeing in a quiet saltwater cove on the Maine coast when I realized I had a tiny stowaway onboard. A masked shrew (Sorex cinereus, also called the cinereus or common shrew) was ...