Christmas Island shrew officially declared extinct: IUCN

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.” But since 1985, there have been no confirmed records of the species, “despite surveys and many studies,” notes the species’ latest conservation assessment. That assessment, for the IUCN Red List, concludes the species is now officially extinct. It was last assessed in 2016 as critically endangered (possibly extinct). The shrew’s decline on the island likely started in the early 20th century when a visiting ship accidentally introduced black rats (Rattus rattus) within bales of hay. Two of the island’s endemic rat species, found nowhere else on Earth, were soon wiped out, likely from a blood-borne parasite transmitted by the black rats. Maclear’s rat (Rattus macleari) and the bulldog rat (Rattus nativitatis) were last recorded before 1908. The parasite also…This article was originally published on Mongabay