Swamp musk shrew
species of mammal
The swamp musk shrew (Crocidura mariquensis), or musk shrew, is a species of mammal in the family Soricidae. It occurs in Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Its natural habitat is swamps, and it is a common species in suitable habitats, with the International Union for Conservation of Nature listing it as being of "least concern".
Description
This is a moderate-sized shrew growing to a head-and-body length of about 80 mm (3 in) with a tail of around 60 mm (2.4 in), males being slightly larger than females. The head is long and narrow, with a sharply pointed snout, small eyes and rounded ears. The dorsal pelage is blackish-brown tinged with rust, the individual hairs having greyish bases, brownish bands and brownish-black tips. The ventral surface is paler greyish-brown, there being no clear demarcation between dorsal and ventral fur. The tail is about 70% of the head-and-body length, and is partially haired and some shade of brown, sometimes paler below. Both fore and hind feet are yellowish-brown, reddish-brown or dark brown, and the digits of the hind feet splay apart when the animal is walking. There is considerable variation in colouring over the shrew's range.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Swamp musk shrew” is species of mammal. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Swamp, musk and shrew, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 5, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q611034. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Swamp musk shrew” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.