Various insect-eating mammals
Tree shrews and other primitive insect eating mammals (with representatives in mammalian orders Insectivora and Macroscelida) have survived and are scattered worldwide. In Malaysia, alongside the Tree shrew, lives an unkempt irritable creature with a long nose bristling with whiskers and smelling of rotten garlic and is known as a moon rat (Echinosorex gymnurus). In Africa there is the otter shrew (Potamogale velox), the biggest of all and a powerful swimmer; and a whole group the size of rats which hop, have slender elegant legs and mobile thin trunks and are called elephant shrews (Order Macroscelida). In the Caribbean there is another insectivore called the Solenodon (Solendon paradoxus). However, the most spectacular radiation of insectivores has occurred in Madagascar and are called tenrecs. Some of these animal are striped and hairy with stiffened quills (Hemicentetes semispinosus), whereas others have all their hairs stiffened into spines on their backs (Echinops telfairi) and resemble European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus), and yet others have become large and lost their tails (Tenrec ecaudatus).
Insectivores are thought to be the most primitive of the present-day mammalian orders.
