Say hello to the Grey-Faced Sengi!

Several years ago, while on a visit to the Philadelphia Zoo, I first saw a creature I had never heard of before; the black and rufus sengi (Rhynchocyon petersi). The exhibit caption simply called it a giant elephant shrew, and even though I was familiar with smaller members of the Macroscelididae like the short-eared elephant shrew (Macroscelides proboscideus), I had never seen their giant relatives. This perhaps represents my own ignorance of the group known as Afrotheria, but the discovery of a new species of giant sengi described in the Journal of Zoology, the grey-faced sengi (Rhynchocyon udzungwensis), is introducing more people to this rare group of animals.

Discovered in Tanzania in 2005, the grey-faced sengi is not only the newest member of the group (the last officially described member of the Rhynchocyoninae, the subfamily to which the giant sengis belong, was named over 100 years ago) but also the largest. At 700g the grey-faced sengi is about 25-50% larger than any other known sengi species. The large size of these animals made capturing specimens in 2006 somewhat problematic; they were too large to be caught in the live traps and nets set out to catch them, although other methods proved to be more successful. It's not enough to simply collect specimens, though, and the team set out camera traps (taking photographs every 24 hours at 1-minute intervals) in an attempt to find out how many sengis were in the area and what they were doing.

Although size and morphological characteristics are important to the description of this new species, color pattern has proven to be most useful in studies of giant sengis. This particular species (see photo above) by "a grizzled grey face, pale yellow to cream chest
and chin, orange-rufous sides, maroon back and jet-black lower rump and thighs." They only seem to exist in two patches of forest separated by grassland, the Ndundulu-Luhomero
forest and the Mwanihana forest, the grassland being far more dangerous for the large sengis.

It is clear that these animals represent a new species, the latest in a line of about 25
new vertebrate species discovered in the last decade from the Eastern Arc Mountains and Tanzanian Southern Highlands, thus making the area especially important to conserve. It does not appear that the area is under direct threat just yet (signs of human encroachment like hunting and tree-cutting being visible, but minor), but that could very well change as populations expand. What the conservation status of this new species of sengi should be is still unknown, but it appears as if there is a healthy population even if it is only presently known from two forests in Tanzania.

[Many thanks to John Lynch for the paper. See his blog for another photograph of the new giant sengi.]

Rovero, F., Rathbun, G.B., Perkin, A., Jones, T., Ribble, D.O., Leonard, C., Mwakisoma, R.R., Doggart, N. (2008). A new species of giant sengi or elephant-shrew (genus Rhynchocyon) highlights the exceptional biodiversity of the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania. Journal of Zoology, 274(2), 126-133. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7998.2007.00363.x