World's smallest predator can recognize prey with sense of touch

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Washington, May 19 : Biologists have determined that the Etruscan shrew, which is one of the world's smallest predators, hunts for its prey predominantly with its sense of touch.

About four centimetres long and weighing merely two grams, the Etruscan shrew is a nocturnal mammal that scans its prey and adapts, when necessary, its hunting strategy, ensuring that no prey can escape.

The smaller an animal is, the greater is its loss of warmth over its surface. To avoid starvation, the Etruscan shrew has to constantly compensate for this life-threatening energy loss. Thus, it consumes twice its weight every day and feeds on crickets, cockroaches, and spiders.

The shrews hunt in the night and must rely on their sense of touch. With long whiskers at the snout, they can locate potential prey and recognize whom exactly they are facing.

Afterwards, the shrews kill their prey using directed attacks, since the prey are nearly as big as their predator.

The researchers could observe that the shrews track down crickets with a forceful bite in the back.

To investigate whether the animals recognize their prey by its shape, they offered the Etruscan shrews a plastic cricket.

Though the artificial animal neither moved nor smelled, the Etruscan shrews attacked the plastic prey up to 15 times.

"The Etruscan shrews trust in their sense of touch and the tactile shape recognition in an extent we do not know from other animal species," reported Professor Michael Brecht from the Bernstein Center for Computional Neuroscience, Berlin.

"Also, the animals can adjust quickly to new situations", Brecht pointed out.

To examine this theory, the scientists exchanged the living crickets with a giant cockroach, which differs clearly from the natural prey of the shrews. The back of the cockroach is protected by a heavy shield and is therefore saved from the normal attacks of the Etruscan shrews.

However, the experiments showed that the shrews succeeded in adapting their natural hunting strategy to the new prey in very short time, realizing that the belly is the cockroach's weak point.

"The shrews are learning during the hunt and use the new knowledge right away," said Brecht. "Even the giant cockroach can not escape," he added.

ANI

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