The Christmas Island shrew, a tiny mammal once found only on the Australian island of the same name, has been declared officially extinct. It’s at least the fourth small mammal species to be wiped out from the island since the introduction of invasive species there a century ago.
The Christmas Island shrew (Crocidura trichura) was once widespread before humans arrived on the island, which lies much closer to the Indonesian island of Java than to the Australian mainland. John Woinarski, a conservation biologist at Charles Darwin University, Australia, writes in The Conversation that European naturalists first visiting Christmas Island in the 1890s noted “this little animal is extremely common all over the island, and at night its shrill shriek, like the cry of a bat, can be heard on all sides.”
