Also known as elephant shrews on account of their superficially shrew-like form and long trunk-like snout, sengis comprise an exclusively African order of mammals. Relatively small, forest-floor inhabitants, only 15 species were known until recently, when a 16th, and, in sengi terms, positively huge species was dramatically unveiled to science. The size of a small dog, roughly 25 per cent bigger than all other sengis, and brightly coloured with orange and grey fur, this veritable giant (above) has been dubbed the grey-faced giant sengi Rhynchocyon udzungwensis. It is the first sengi to have been discovered for over 125 years, and inhabits the Ndunlulu forest in Tanzania’s remote Udzungwa Mountains. Its existence was first made known to science in 2005, when one was caught on film by a camera trap set up in the forest by Italian zoologist Dr Francesco Rovero. Then, in March 2006, Rovero returned there with fellow zoologist Dr Galen Rathbun from the California Academy of Sciences, and captured four specimens alive. Two separate populations are now known to exist in this still little-explored locality.

www.conservation.org/FMG/Articles/Pages/01310803.aspx 31 Jan 2008.