A Checklist To The 10 Shrews Of Sri Lanka

1
The Asian House Shrew
The Asian House Shrew - more notably called the Common Indian Musk Shrew - is considered invasive species across South and Southeast Asia. Fifteen-centimetre nose to tail, it is able to live almost anywhere and breeds with ease

2
The Ceylon Highland Shrew
The tiny endemic grey furred Ceylon Highland Shrew is highly endangered and restricted to the central highlands of the country.

3
The Ceylon Jungle Shrew
Nocturnal and endemic and barely twenty centimetres long, nose to nail, the Ceylon Jungle Shrew inhabits the island’s subtropical and tropical forests.

4
The Ceylon Long-Tailed Shrew
At little more than centimetres nose to tail and covered in red to grey fur, the endemic Ceylon Long-Tailed Shrew is so deeply threatened by habitat loss and logging that it has recently only been recorded in 5 highly fragmented areas in the Central and Sabaragamuwa provinces, despite its record of living as happily in the high mountain forests as much as the lowland ones.

5
The Ceylon Pigmy Shrew
The endemic Ceylon Pigmy Shrew barely measure nine centimetres, nose to tail and sports fur that is nicely chocolate brown to dark grey. Highly endangered, it has been recorded as living in the low mountain rainforests of the Sabaragamuwa and Central Provinces, with a possible third sighting in the Western Province.

6
The Indian Grey Musk Rat Shrew
Very similar in size, habitat and behaviour as the Asian House Shrew, the Indian Grey Musk Rat Shrew is also considered to be an invasive species in Sri Lanka.

7
Horsfield’s Shrew
The diminutive nine-inch Horsfield’s Shrew remains little understood or studied. Its distribution across India and Sri Lanka is only patchily comprehended, and its habits and description limited to a few notes about its unremarkable brown grey fur.

8
Kelaart's Long Tailed Shrew
Kelaart's Long Tailed Shrew is restricted to the grasslands, swamps and forest of Sri Lanka and southern India. A colossal (for shrews) twenty centimetres in length nose to tail, it has grey black fur and is ever more endangered, largely due to shrinking habitat options.

9
Pearson's Long-Clawed Shrew
Pearson's Long-Clawed Shrew was discovered in 1924 when it would have been a much more common sight than it is today, commonly found in forests and grasslands – habitats that are now so embattled as to render the endemic creature highly endangered. It is at the petite spectrum of island shrews, measuring just twelve centimetres nose to tail and sporting grey brown fur.

10
The Sinharaja White-Toothed Shrew
In 2007, after extensive research it was discovered that what had been masquerading in Sinharaja as the Ceylon Long-Tailed Shrew was actually a quite different shrew species, and one that had, till then, not been properly recognised or identified. A closer study of its bone structure, taken with the simple observation that it had a shorter tail, resulted in the formal recognition of this new endemic species. However, the resulting Sinharaja White-Toothed Shrew is so restricted in distribution as to be almost entirely invisible – and has been found in only two areas of the edge of the Sinharaja Forest.