Species group · Mammals
WAnimals has 3 species of tenrec, in the family Tenrecidae.
Ranges calculated from the profiles that record the figure, not from all 3.
Each one has its own full profile. This group does not replace them: it brings them together.
No species documented in this group is genuinely at risk according to the IUCN, with the data available today.
Recorded in 4 countries. The ones with the most species in the group:
It rolls into a ball with its spines raised exactly as a European hedgehog does, but its closest relatives are the elephants and the manatees: it is one of the examples of evolutionary convergence most often cited in zoology textbooks.
It can go torpid for months in the dry season, dropping its body temperature close to that of its surroundings, which is uncommon in a tropical mammal.
It is the only mammal known to produce sound by stridulation: it rubs specialised quills on its back against one another, just as a cricket rubs its wings, to keep in contact with the rest of the group in dense vegetation.
Its young can breed five weeks after birth, the earliest sexual maturity recorded in any mammal.
It can have litters of over 30 young, among the largest recorded in any placental mammal, and its spiny body recalls a hedgehog by convergent evolution.
From Tailess Tenrec
It has the largest litters of any mammal: births of as many as thirty-two young have been documented, and the females have more than twenty pairs of teats in order to suckle them.
From Tailess Tenrec
The young communicate with their mother by raising and rubbing specialised dorsal spines that produce a high-frequency sound, a stridulation mechanism that, within its group, the species shares only with the streaked tenrec.
From Tailess Tenrec