Least shrews have an extremely high metabolic rate. This rapid conversion of food to energy requires that these animals consume up to their own body weight in food every day. The highly social and gregarious least shrew often cooperates in building burrows or nests, which are sometimes shared with other least shrews during the nesting and wintering seasons. The species uses the runways and burrows of moles, voles and other small mammals but will make its own runways in soft, loose soil. Tunnels under the snow provide protection from wind and intense cold, allowing least shrews to remain active all winter.
Least shrews rely mainly on their senses of touch and smell.
Sight and hearing are not well developed. Like Connecticut's other shrew species, the least shrew only lives a short time, usually a little over a year. After being born in the summer, shrews overwinter as juveniles, breed the following spring, raise 2 to 3 litters of young, and then die. The size of the least shrew and its preferred habitat are reflected in historic names, such as little short-tailed shrew, little shrew and field shrew. State - Connecticut General Statutes Sec.