Mondo Knows Facts
The Etruscan shrew is the lightest living mammal
Full grown adults weigh about 1.8 grams, less than large insects The shrew is roughly 4 centimetres long plus a tail, and its body weight is around 1.8 grams, making it the smallest mammal by mass. To stay warm it eats up to twice its body weight every day and has an extremely fast heart rate. It hunts insects with whiskers that feel prey in the dark. It sits in Mondo's records & extremes collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: mammals, small, shrews
The Etruscan shrew is the lightest living mammal: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Full grown adults weigh about 1.8 grams, less than large insects. The figure is taken from Smithsonian Institution, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a records & extremes fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Records & Extremes shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.