California’s Venomous Shrew Finally Caught on Camera

Last year zoology students at Berkeley were surprised to learn that every living mammal indigenous to California had been captured on film except for one, the Mount Lyell shrew. That omission became a mission for Prakrit Jain and Harper Forbes, along with wildlife photographer Vishal Subramanyan, who ventured out into the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains to find the elusive shrew.

They found one. Actually they found 15 shrews – lured out using baited traps filled with mealworms and cat food – six of which turned out to be the yet-unfilmed Mount Lyell. “Handling the shrews was a little bit difficult,” Forbes tells CNN, adding that the researchers snipped off a small piece of the shrews’ tails for genetic testing.

“They bite and they’re venomous. So we had to improvise quite a bit. We had to weigh them in plastic bags, and they’re only a few grams, but they chew through the plastic bags. They’re kind of a pain generally, but they’re worth it.”

The Mount Lyell shrew (Sorex lyelli) is named for the Yosemite peak where it has been seen in the past but never captured on film (what’s up with that, Ansel Adams?). Discovered by naturalist Clinton Hart Merriam over a century ago, the little mammal grows to less than four inches long and weighs under a pound.

“It just shows that it’s generally an underappreciated species in an underappreciated ecosystem that people haven’t spent the time, and been able to actually bring dedicated focus to the shrews,” says Subramanyan, speaking like a photographer.

The filming of the shrew was done near the small community of Lee Vining, about 300 miles east of San Francisco.

Photo credit: Vishal Subramanyan, Prakrit Jain, Harper Forbes