Kentucky’s occurrence data hold 238 records of the short-tailed shrew, roughly split between iNaturalist sightings and GBIF specimen data. Reports concentrate around Daniel Boone National Forest and Mammoth Cave National Park, which says more about where hikers and surveyors go than about the shrew’s real distribution.
Comfortable across very different ground
This shrew turns up equally in the Bluegrass region’s rolling limestone pasture and woodland edges, the sinkhole-pocked karst plains around Mammoth Cave National Park in the Pennyroyal, and the sandstone hollows of the Appalachian Plateau at Daniel Boone National Forest. Wherever loose, moist soil sits under a mat of leaf litter, from Bluegrass Wildlife Management Area to the state’s eastern hills, this shrew can tunnel through it.
A shrew with a venomous bite
Short-tailed shrews hunt insects, earthworms, snails, and even small vertebrates, and their saliva carries a mild venom that helps subdue prey too large to simply overpower. That aggressive hunting style lets a small animal punch above its weight in the leaf litter and topsoil it works across the state.
Status in Kentucky
The short-tailed shrew is native to Kentucky and isn’t flagged as nonindigenous by USGS NAS. NatureServe ranks it S5, secure, consistent with a generalist that can use woodland floor almost anywhere in the state.
