To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video. Up Next. This Mount Lyell shrew is ready for his close-up – finally. Well over a century since its discovery, this tiny never-before-pictured mammal has been photographed alive.
![[Over a century after its discovery, the Mount Lyell shrew has finally been photographed alive for the first time. Until last October, the Mount Lyell Shrew was the ONLY known mammal species in California that had never been photographed alive.]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SEI_236362252-6967.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
The pointy-nosed shrew spends their days nibbling on insects hiding under logs in the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range in California. At least, scientists think they ‘probably’ do. Researchers know little about the furry critters as they’ve never been captured – a factsheet on the shrew by the California government mainly says ‘no data found’.
![[Over a century after its discovery, the Mount Lyell shrew has finally been photographed alive for the first time. Until last October, the Mount Lyell Shrew was the ONLY known mammal species in California that had never been photographed alive.]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SEI_236362255-8c62.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
No images can be found either of the Mount Lynell shrew, with a search on Google turning up nothing by sketches and maps. Its Wikipedia page is only a few paragraphs long, and experts have long worried it would remain that way given the shrew is of ‘special concern’ amid climate change.
But researchers Vishal Subramanyan, 22, Prakrit Jain, 20, and Harper Forbes, 22, have photographed the shrew alive for the first time. Found scurrying around the brush near Lee Vining in the Eastern Sierra, the California Academy of Sciences captured five beady-eyed specimens in November.
They measured between nine to 10cm long and weighed only three grams. ‘Despite this shrew being a species of special concern, scientists know next to nothing about it,’ the academy said on Facebook. ‘They’re thought to be highly vulnerable to climate change impacts due to their dependence on high altitude habitats that are quickly disappearing.
