Arkansas’s short-tailed shrew records are thin, just 30 in the open databases, but they cluster tightly in the ridge-and-hollow country of the northern Ozarks and Boston Mountains, the western edge of this species’ whole range.
A shrew of the highland leaf litter
The northern short-tailed shrew needs deep, moist leaf litter and loose soil to tunnel through, conditions common on the forest floor around Buffalo National River, Ozark National Forest, and Devil’s Den State Park. It digs its own burrows but also borrows the runways of voles and moles, working just under the surface where it’s shielded from weather and predators. Arkansas sits near the western edge of the species’ range, which otherwise runs across the northern and eastern United States, so records here mark the outer reach of a shrew that’s reported far more often farther north and east.
A shrew built to overpower prey twice its size
This is one of the few North American mammals with toxic saliva. A bite delivers a mild venom that helps it subdue insects, worms, snails, and even small vertebrates it couldn’t otherwise overpower, letting it store live but immobilized prey for later. Its metabolism runs so hot that it has to eat close to its own body weight in food most days, which keeps it tunneling through leaf litter almost constantly rather than resting for long stretches.
Status in Arkansas
USGS data doesn’t list the northern short-tailed shrew as nonindigenous anywhere in Arkansas, and it’s treated as native across its mapped range in the state. A close relative, the southern short-tailed shrew, takes over the Delta lowlands farther south and east, so between the two species, Arkansas’s shrews roughly track the split between highland and lowland ground.
