Insectivores And Shrews (Eulipotyphla)

This group gathers Mammals subcategory members belonging to the order Eulipotyphla, a group of small, mostly insect eating mammals with a long pointed snout, a body plan thought to closely resemble that of some of the earliest placental mammals. It spans the true shrews, among the smallest living mammals by body mass, the hedgehogs, protected by a coat of sharp spines rather than fur across the back and sides, the moles, adapted with broad digging forelimbs for a mostly underground life, and the solenodons, a small, ancient and now critically endangered family found only on a handful of Caribbean islands. Once grouped together with a much wider range of unrelated small mammals under the older, now abandoned order Insectivora, these families are united here by genuine shared ancestry rather than by the superficial resemblance that name once implied.