Georgia’s records for this shrew span an unusually wide slice of the state, from the Blue Ridge hardwood forest around Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest in the north down to the Okefenokee Swamp and out to the maritime forest of Cumberland Island on the coast. Few mammals on this atlas turn up across that same mountains-to-coast spread of Georgia’s landscape. NatureServe ranks the species S5, secure, in Georgia.
It’s one of only a handful of venomous mammals in North America, with a mild toxin in its saliva that helps it subdue insects, worms, and snails larger than it could otherwise handle. It spends most of its life tunneling through leaf litter and loose topsoil rather than moving in the open, and its metabolism runs so fast it has to keep hunting almost constantly to survive.
Reports peak in April, but records turn up in every month of the year, which fits a shrew that lives underground year-round rather than one that migrates or hibernates. Because it’s rarely seen above ground, the true Georgia population is almost certainly larger than the record count alone suggests.
