Rare animal photographed alive for the first time in history

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.

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’.

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.

‘To find this animal, Vishal and his colleagues worked around the clock, staying up through the night to maintain and monitor traps.’

The young mammologists found and snapped photos of five Mount lynell shrews in the high desert, sharing their findings on Thursday.

Subramanyan told SFGATE he and his friends came up with the idea after capturing tiny rodents during a field trip.

They soon became obsessed with mini mammals and vowed to get up, close and personal with a Mount Lynell shrew.

The species – known to scientists as Sorex lyelli – was discovered by biologist Clinton Hart Merriam in 1902.

‘The shrew hasn’t been trapped or recorded in two decades,’ Subramanyan said.

‘So it’s very possibly one of the most poorly known mammal species in California.’

What researchers do know about them explains why they are so tricky to track down.

On top of being about as long as a pencil, these shrews have such high metabolism they need to eat something every two hours or else they die.

This means that, if wildlife analysts set an overnight trap and manage to capture a shrew, they’ll likely wake up to it dead.

So, Jain, Forbes and Subramanyan, slept for no longer than two hours at a time and regularly checked the traps they dug near streams and wetlands.

These traps weren’t anything technical – the group dug holes and placed plastic cups in them to make pitfalls and filled the cups with cat food.

And it seems cat food is on the menu for Mount Lyell shrews, as the team nabbed one within the first two hours.

Subramanyan said that capturing the elusive shrew on camera is ‘really important for cataloguing biodiversity on a rapidly changing planet’.

A 2015 UC Davis study found that as humans continue to pump out planet-warming greenhouse gases, the little-known Mountain Lyell shrew stands to lose up nearly 90% of its habitat.

‘When it comes to California’s shrews, there’s so few good photos out there,’ Subramanyan added.

‘So taking these photos that haven’t really been taken before helps the public understand and foster a connection with these animals.’

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