Tenrec

The tenrec is a mammal of the family Tenrecidae, found on Madagascar and in parts of the African mainland.

Tenrecs are varied. As a result of convergent evolution, they look like hedgehogs, shrews, opossums, mice and even otters.Savage RJG, & Long MR 1986. Mammal evolution: an illustrated guide. New York: Facts on File. p. 53.  They occupy aquatic, arboreal, terrestrial and underground habitats. Some of these species can be found in the Madagascar's dry deciduous forests.

Although they may resemble shrews, hedgehogs, or otters, they are not closely related to any of these groups. Their closest relatives are other African, insectivorous mammals such as golden moles and elephant shrews. The common ancestry of these animals, together with aardvarks, hyraxes, elephants, and sea cows in the group Afrotheria, was not recognized until the late 1990s.Stanhope M.J. et al 1998. Molecular evidence for multiple origins of Insectivora and for a new order of endemic African insectivore mammals. PNAS 95 (17): 9967–72.  Work on the diversity of afrotherian mammals has provided more support for their common ancestry.Asher R.J; Bennet N. & Lehmann T. 2009. The new framework for understanding placental mammal evolution. BioEssays 31 (8): 853–64. Tabuce R. et al 2007. Early tertiary mammals from North Africa reinforce the molecular Afrotheria clade. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 274 (1614): 1159–66.  

Unusual among placental mammals, the anus and urogenital tracts of tenrecs share a common opening, or cloaca, a feature more commonly seen in birds, reptiles, and amphibians. They have low body temperatures, sufficiently so that they do not require a scrotum to cool their sperm as most other mammals do.Nicholl, Martin 1984. In Macdonald D. (ed) The encyclopedia of mammals. New York: Facts on File, pp. 744–747. 

 References 

Category:Mammals of Africa